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The latest numbers are in from Nielsen Online, and they conclude the obvious: Facebook is downright surging in popularity. The site registered a record 47.5M U... read more.
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The latest numbers are in from Nielsen Online, and they conclude the obvious: Facebook is downright surging in popularity. The site registered a record 47.5M US-based unique visitors in November, up from 39.9M just one month prior.
Top social network MySpace continued to hover around 60M, with an official count of 59.1M. If you’re looking for a shoe-in bet for your 2009 tech predictions, it’s this: Facebook will surpass MySpace in US traffic at some point next year. In all, Facebook has increased its traffic 116% so far this year, up from 21.9MM uniques at this time in 2007.
Elsewhere, Twitter grew nearly 50 percent month-over-month according to Nielsen, from 2.2 million unique visitors in October to 3.2M in November. That surge is likely due in-part to the US Presidential election, where Twitter played a big part in some mainstream media coverage.
Who are the other hot social networking sites as 2008 draws to a close? Tagged.com is up 465% since last year, Ning is +270%, LinkedIn is +114%, and Imeem is +68%. The full report from Nielsen Online is embedded below:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl
---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Facebook Beats MySpace and YouTube Among Young AdultsMySpace Still Dominating Social Networks with 80% of VisitscomScore: Facebook Traffic Flattening; MySpace Hits RecordFacebook Overtakes MySpace for Search Inquiries in the UKFacebook Hits Record 39MM Visitors in USFacebook and Bebo Takeover MySpace in the UKFacebook Now 2/3rds the Size of MySpace in US
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Workstir is a relatively new site you might not be immediately familiar with; it’s a service for submitting work requests for everything from home repairs to we... read more.
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Workstir is a relatively new site you might not be immediately familiar with; it’s a service for submitting work requests for everything from home repairs to web design, where people looking for work can then browse those listings and submit bids. The site just implemented Facebook Connect, and it’s a great example of what makes the portable identity service so intriguing.
First is the obvious – you can sign up for Workstir without creating an account, but instead using your Facebook login info. That’s a big deal in its own right – I probably wouldn’t sign up for Workstir if it required a lengthy sign up process - but we already know about that. The bigger deal is how Workstir takes other data from your Facebook profile to make the user experience on the site much more user-friendly.
Since Workstir knows your location (that you’ve provided to Facebook), it can immediately show you listings in your area, rather than requiring you to do a search. Moreover, when you post a listing, your location is pre-selected, saving you time in the process of getting that listing online.
This might not seem like a huge deal, but as a first-time user of the site, the experience is certainly better than other classified sites where you have to navigate to your city. Also, when you post a listing, you’ll get the added benefit of it being broadcast to your social network back on Facebook, significantly widening the audience of people that might be able to fill your request.
Another aspect of Workstir’s implementation to consider: the trustworthiness that using someone’s Facebook profile builds. As opposed to Craigslist, where everything is relatively anonymous, when users post via Facebook Connect, they are adding at least some credibility behind their listing, since you can click-thru to their profile, see who their friends are, see pictures, etc. Workstir also plans to use Connect to let users leave reviews of workers who list their services on the site.
On a sidenote, we’re still in the very early days of Facebook Connect and on the lookout for interesting implementations to share, so drop us a line if you’re doing something cool with it (or Google Friend Connect or MySpace ID for that matter).
Some other great ideas - especially pertaining to Connect and its implications for ecommerce - can be found in the presentation from Razorfish embedded below – Portable Social Graphs: Imagining their Potential (via Stay N’ Alive):
Portable Social Graphs - Imagining their Potential
---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Facebook Connect Gets a Plugin DirectoryFacebook Connect: The News is the NewsDisqus to Integrate Facebook ConnectDon’t Miss Facebook Developer Garage New YorkFacebook Blocks Google’s Friend Connect. There Goes the Open Web.HOW TO: Add Facebook Connect to Your Blog in 8 MinutesTwitter Now Live on Google Friend Connect
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The iPhone is coming to Wal-Mart and will be cheaper — by $2The iPhone at Wal-Mart: A Brand-Decimating Marriage?
FreundFeed? FriendFeed launches in six new lang... read more.
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on December 17, 2008
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The iPhone is coming to Wal-Mart and will be cheaper — by $2The iPhone at Wal-Mart: A Brand-Decimating Marriage?
FreundFeed? FriendFeed launches in six new languages
Tribune Bankruptcy: Company Files Chapter 11
Barack Obama: Zune user
Actually, Barack Obama Doesn't Use a Zune [Zunegate]
Are we really this f*ing lazy
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on December 17, 2008
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Pole Dancing Robots Ruin Both Robots and Strippers Simultaneously [Robots]Second Google Android Phone Revealed
Obama’s Zunegate
Vid-Biz: Blockbuster, Jokes.com,... read more.
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on December 17, 2008
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Pole Dancing Robots Ruin Both Robots and Strippers Simultaneously [Robots]Second Google Android Phone Revealed
Obama’s Zunegate
Vid-Biz: Blockbuster, Jokes.com, 236.com
Walmart to sell a 4GB, $99 version of the iPhone?
Facebook Connect is Here; It’s Like OpenID for Dummies
Google Friend Connect: Try it Now on Mashable
Kogan Agora: Why the New Android Handset Matters
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Shownotes soon, for now, this embed.
<object id="ep_player" name="ep_player" height="390" width="480" data="http://cdn.episodic.com/player/EpisodicPlayer.swf... read more.
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Shownotes soon, for now, this embed.
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test post
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on December 17, 2008
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Running a streaming video site isn’t cheap. Yahoo realized this and shutdown its Yahoo Live service, while YouTube’s lack of profitability is the constant ire ... read more.
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on December 15, 2008
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Running a streaming video site isn’t cheap. Yahoo realized this and shutdown its Yahoo Live service, while YouTube’s lack of profitability is the constant ire of many. Stickam has apparently taken note, and is launching an API that enables other websites to utilize its service to add live streaming video.
Sites that implement the API can let their users record, watch, or collaborate on videos, all without leaving. Stickam envisions the API being ideal for social networking sites, online learning, and customer support. The company explains the basics and offers a few other example uses in the video below:
While it’s debuting as a free public beta, Stickam’s API will eventually be a pay-for-usage service. Still, as opposed to the server and bandwidth costs associated with doing it yourself, Stickam’s API makes live streaming video far more accessible to other websites. Additionally, it should help the company offset some of its own ongoing infrastructure costs.
---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Stickam’s Webcam Facebook AppStickam Launches Stickam ListingsStickam Adds Mobile Video Streaming to Compete With Qik, FlixwagonCuStickam - Stickam Profile EditorMashMeet LA Caught on Tape!fix8 Signs Deal with StickamStickam, YouTube, SecondLife do the Sundance
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on December 15, 2008
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Downloading YouTube videos isn’t a feature supported natively by the site: copyright issues are the likely reason. And yet, often we find ourselves wanting to ... read more.
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on December 15, 2008
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Downloading YouTube videos isn’t a feature supported natively by the site: copyright issues are the likely reason. And yet, often we find ourselves wanting to download a great video to our desktops for remixing or offline viewing.
KickYouTube serves up an elegantly simple solution: simply go to the YouTube video you’d like to download and insert the word “kick” at the start of the URL. The final url would look something like http://kickyoutube.com/watch?v=39pZ1r3MG2Q, and options to download the clip are provided at the top of the page.
You don’t need me to tell you that having YouTube in your URL is blatant trademark infringement, however, so don’t expect this method to work for long. For more solutions, try our list of 20 ways to download YouTube videos…most of which have avoided the wrath of Google’s lawyers.
[via Lifehacker]
---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Download YouTube VideoYouTube Downloads: vConvert.netTube Toolbox Automates YouTube FeaturesCovertTube: Download YouTube Clips or Buy the Whole SiteMobile YouTube Now Includes Most YouTube VideosGoogle Video Adds Free Music Videos from Warner and SonyNazi Videos On YouTube Cause Concern In Germany
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Facebook Connect can now be instantly added to any blog (see video above).
Are you adding it to your blog? Give us your blog URL in the comments and we’ll ch... read more.
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on December 15, 2008
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Facebook Connect can now be instantly added to any blog (see video above).
Are you adding it to your blog? Give us your blog URL in the comments and we’ll check it out!
[hat tip to Dave Morin for the video]
---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Facebook Connect: The News is the NewsTwitter, We Are Poking You to Fix Your Facebook AppDon’t Miss Facebook Developer Garage New YorkFacebook Blocks Google’s Friend Connect. There Goes the Open Web.Facebook Connect vs Google Friend Connect: Fight!Facebook Claims to Lead in People SearchFacebook Connect Launches with 24 Partners Including Digg and Six Apart
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Andrew Warner is an Internet entrepreneur and the founder of Mixergy. He interviews successful people to learn how they did it. You can listen to his interviews... read more.
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on December 10, 2008
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Andrew Warner is an Internet entrepreneur and the founder of Mixergy. He interviews successful people to learn how they did it. You can listen to his interviews at Mixergy.com.
Guy Kawasaki, the investor, entrepreneur and best selling author, just wrote a new book called Reality Check. The book is a collection of practical ideas for building a successful business. With the book in mind, I asked him for a few reality checks for Mashable readers. Here are seven:
Reality Check #1: Do one thing well
If your startup tries to do too much, you’ll lose. Guy told me, “I meet companies every day who say, ‘well we’re software services, and we’re also consulting. And we are a social networking site, but we also do white labeling in case you want to use our technology to do your own social network.’ And you know what, it’s hard to do any one of those things, try doing four.”
Reality Check #2: Court your thunder lizards
Quit pretending that you’re smarter than your community. Find ways to act on the energy of your “thunder lizards,” Guy’s term for your most passionate community members. Guy does that at Alltop, his RSS aggregation site.
“There are some people who not only suggest topics for Alltop, they send us their OPML files with all the feeds that should be in those topics. All we had to do there is have an open mind to having other people contribute to the community and to the quality of Alltop. But many, many companies will refuse that help. They’ll say, ‘NO. We know better.’”
Reality Check #3: Be crappy
Stop working on making your product perfectly perfect before you launch it. “You need to ship something that’s truly different and valuable and all that, but version 1 doesn’t have to be perfect,” says Guy. “Version 1 of Alltop had only 12 topics. We didn’t exactly have critical mass. If we had waited till we had 500, we’d still be waiting today. Once you have an idea…you ship it and then you test as you go.”
Reality Check #4: Learn to steal
You don’t have to invent your best business ideas. Guy has said many times that he created Alltop by copying popurls, an aggregations site that focused on a narrow set of subjects.
“Popurls was sending Truemors [a site Guy launched previously] so much traffic. And so we looked at what the hell is this popurls thing sending us as much traffic as Google. And then I got to know the creator of popurls and I asked him if he was going to do anything besides tech and business. And he said, ‘no.’ So I said, alright, I’m going to do them all.”
Reality Check #5: Hire “blindly”
Without realizing it, employers bring biases into job interviews. To hire smarter, Guy suggests doing your interviews over the phone–without seeing applicants. ”When you do things in person,” he said, “because of the person’s physical nature–attractive/unattractive, sloppy/not sloppy, fashionable/not fashionable–you make these judgment and it changes the interview. Where if you didn’t see the person and didn’t know what he/she looked like or smelled like or dressed like, I think it’s a much more objective interview.”
Reality Check #6: Just build it already
This is a tough market for raising money. Before you waste your time trying to raise money, work on building your product. “I think now, you truly have to show up with a prototype and even better a working site,” he told me. “You can no longer say, ‘give me a few million bucks and trust me I’ll build it.’ Now you have to show up with something that’s done.” After doing that, you might find that you don’t even need investors’ money.
Reality Check #7: Be honest
How’s this for openness? I asked Guy about his crowning achievement as a venture capital investor. “I don’t have a crowning touch,” he told me. “I believe I am still not proven as a VC. … I haven’t picked a Google, Yahoo, Apple or Cisco. I want to, but I haven’t.”
Have you heard another VC admit that? I haven’t. But it’s the kind of openness that helped Guy’s readers trust his honesty.
Now it’s your turn to hit us with a reality check. What do you think startups need to know about building companies in this environment?
---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Interview: Guy Kawasaki Launches Alltop with $10,000Gotuit Powers Video Clips for Fox Reality Channel AwardsExclusive: Reality.TV is AFV Sans SagetReality Digital Gets Another $6.3M for White-Label VideoChris Crocker Eyes Reality TV CareerRealityWanted Releaunches as a Network for VH1-Bound SuperstarsGuy Kawasaki’s Frienderati Slightly Flawed [video]
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on December 10, 2008
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Remember how “bad” those Microsoft commercials were? If you thought those were odd and slightly off-putting, you obviously haven’t seen the most recent ads fro... read more.
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on December 03, 2008
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Remember how “bad” those Microsoft commercials were? If you thought those were odd and slightly off-putting, you obviously haven’t seen the most recent ads from Ask.com, which are now making the rounds with commentarians asking the same questions they asked about Jerry Seinfeld: “Why?”
“Why is their marketing so random?” asks Harry McCracken.
“Why is their marketing so creepy?” asks SAI’s Dan Frommer.
“Why is the music so sad? Why is she obese? More important: why is she BRITISH?” asks VideoGum.
Harry did accurately observe that the base message being conveyed in the most recent Ask.com commercial is more or less the same as what they started with back in 1996 with AskJeeves, the original moniker for the site.
While I think that the Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft ads could be arguably groundbreaking, in that they were more like sponsored entertainment content rather than traditional advertisement, I have a hard time defending these Ask.com ads. The ads seem to have most pundits and Twitter reactionaries asking questions rather than wanting to try out the service.
Here are the two most recent ads:
On the other hand, those who live “outside the bubble,” so to speak, all seem to have the uniform reaction that the ads are just downright hilarious.
Are we over-analyzing, or are these ads just duds?
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on December 03, 2008
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Crazy Christmas light displays aren’t exactly a new thing. Out here in my part of Texas, there are two “Christmas-land” light displays that are about two or th... read more.
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on December 03, 2008
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Crazy Christmas light displays aren’t exactly a new thing. Out here in my part of Texas, there are two “Christmas-land” light displays that are about two or three miles of non-stop light displays. The new thing a couple years ago for the techno-savvy was to synchronize the Christmas lights you stick on your house to the music playing on a low-power FM station.
This year, rather than limit the display to those just within driving distance, a couple decided to open up their stream to the entirety of the Internet. The side-scroller indicates that they’re both at work to pay for what must be simply monstrous light bills.
Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV
Hopefully Santa Claus will grant them enough clicks on their ads to help defray the cost. In the meantime, enjoy the show!
---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Lights Off on your iPhone: First Native GameCrazyEgg LaunchesA Web 2.0 Christmas Fairy TaleTop 8 Christmas MySpace Pages To Make Your Eyes BleedCHRISTMAS TOOLBOX: 20+ Tools For A Merry ChristmasThe Internet: The Pop-Up BookChristmas On the Web…Sucks
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on December 03, 2008
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Pet food company Purina has launched “Critter Carols,” a site allowing you to create an animated holiday greeting card using images of your own cats or dogs.
... read more.
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on December 02, 2008
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Pet food company Purina has launched “Critter Carols,” a site allowing you to create an animated holiday greeting card using images of your own cats or dogs.
The animals will then meow or bark to the tune of holiday classics like “Deck the Halls” or “Jingle Bells.” You can also dress your pet up with various items of clothing. When done, you can email it, post it to Facebook, or embed it on a webpage, as I’ve done below.
The campaign is very reminiscent of last year’s “Elf Yourself” from Office Depot, where you could upload images of yourself or family members and impose them on the bodies of dancing elves.
Although it’s a bit of a copycat (pun intended), Critter Carols is definitely cuter than Elf Yourself, so it could be this year’s runaway viral holiday hit. The site was developed in partnership with Oddcast.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, liliboas
var federated_media_section = 'holiday';
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on December 02, 2008
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While I do own several Apple products, I’ve often joked about the cult-like nature of some of the company’s fanatical enthusiasts. The Simpsons captured this s... read more.
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on December 01, 2008
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While I do own several Apple products, I’ve often joked about the cult-like nature of some of the company’s fanatical enthusiasts. The Simpsons captured this sentiment remarkably well in a parody of Apple aired last night on FOX.
Complete with “The Mapple Store,” a “MyPod,” a $1200 “MyBill,” and a Bart voice-over of a “Steve Mobs” keynote, the animated series completely nails the stereotypes of Apple products, employees, and users. Check it out in the video below:
---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Stephen Colbert Parodies on YouTube = LegalSimpsonizeMe: Make Your Own HomerFox Shows Coming To MySpace Profiles1 Million iPhones. 74 Days.MySpace Meets The OC800 Apple Employees Lose their iEmployment5 Very Simple Ways to Create an Avatar
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on December 01, 2008
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Help us help you. Mashable would like to know more about you in order to better serve you. Conducted through our advertising network, Federated Media, this surv... read more.
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