Bored? 7 Ways Turn Downtime into Uptime

When you’re self-employed, it’s very common to experience periods of downtime. In fact, in my experience, there tends to be a somewhat predictable cycle that brings about periods of increased workflow that’s followed by a slow down.

When the slow down occurs and how long it lasts is different for every business. But if your business is anything like mine, the periods of the workflow cycle can be intense – from more incoming work than you can handle to an abrupt quiet period. I have come to appreciate this downtime, though, and have a number of things I do to turn the silence into productive time for my business. Here are some ideas:

1. Revisit Your Goals

Spend some time analyzing your goals, the progress you’ve made and what you need to do to stay on course. It’s also helpful to create some mini-goals that will help the process and give you specific activities with measurable results that you can do immediately.

2. Focus on Social Media

Review and revise your social media accounts, update your profiles and join new online business networks. A slowdown in work is also a great time to become more active on social networks and start to build and enhance your relationships.

3. Assess Your Web Site

If you have less client work coming in, it could be the perfect time to give your own web site a close look. Read through the content, check your contact information, perform a SEO check, and test out forms and functionality. You may also want to update your portfolio so it reflects your most recent projects.

4. Reach Out to Clients

Downtime is a great time to send clients a feedback survey to get their take on your work if you didn’t do it at the end of a project. You can also use this time to ask clients for testimonials to use in your marketing materials.

5. Follow-Up and Re-Pitch

Do you have a few proposals out there that you have yet to hear back on? Follow-up with prospects to see if there is still an interest. You may be able to generate some new work, or at least clear your pending list of dead opportunities.

6. Get Organized

If you’ve been fumbling with your tasks and struggling to manage projects, now is a great time to work on your systems. Migrate to a new project management app or try out a new to-do list system to become more productive and less scattered. It’s also a great time to clean your office, organize your files and focus on administrative tasks that tend to be forgotten.

7. Get Away from Work

A workflow slowdown can be the perfect time to take a break, get away from work and refresh your outlook. In my experience, a quiet period is usually followed by a quick ramp up in work, so take the time to enjoy the calm before the storm.

If you can predict this period of downtime, keeping a running list of downtime tasks can help you avoid wasted time. And being focused and busy when work is slow will help you avoid any stress and anxiety that may come with a lack of work.

Plus, if you truly make the most of downtime, you will likely find that it goes by too fast to allow you to accomplish all of your downtime goals, which is not a bad position to be in.

How do you handle downtime in your workflow?

Source: www.sitepoint.com

Facebook Connect Available Now in Multiple Languages

Facebook may be the biggest social network in the world and one of the most visited web sites but it doesn't stop here. The company wants to get as many people as possible using the service and while the site is already the most visited destination online it aims to connect to its users even when they are visiting other sites. This is where Facebook Connect comes in, allowing any site or service to offer Facebook integration.
And with the social network having such a big presence worldwide it was only a matter of time before Facebook Connect got internationalized.

Being the premier social network in the world, as it has officially passed 250 million registered users with only 70 million or so in the US, it’s easy to see why it would need a powerful localized experience and, in fact, Facebook is available in 64 languages already, just 18 months since the program was launched. And now Facebook Connect users can benefit from the same level of service, with all of the features currently available in their native language.

“Developers who've implemented Facebook Connect, including those who have installed social widgets like the Fan Box, now have the ability to decide in which language they want their Facebook Connect features rendered,” James Leszczenski writes on the Facebook developer blog. “When a user first connects to your site, or publishes something back to Facebook, the Facebook Connect content will appear in the language you specify. User-generated content continues to appear in the language in which it was written.”

Facebook Connect has been a resounding success for the site, having been deployed by more than 15,000 sites or services in a little over six months since its launch. The login standard has been adopted by several large companies already, allowing users to login with their Facebook credentials. The localization feature is easy to implement, with webmasters having to make just small modifications to their code.

Article source: Softpedia

Make music a social experience with these sites

We all like to share songs with friends, and we all have songs that share meaning with loved ones. Perhaps that's why there are so many music social networks out there. These sites combine both, and make music exploration and enjoyment something that you're not doing on your own.

From the well-known to the obscure, I've been exploring a variety of music social networks that you'll definitely want to check out:

Buzznet is a great way to connect with other music lovers. You can write status updates and view an activity feed that shows what your friends are listening to. You can also tell all your friends what your "song of the moment" is and post it to a profile that can be completely redesigned and themed using built-in tools.

Buzznet has some songs from major artists, but I would have liked to see more tracks. That said, the site makes up for it with music videos from YouTube. That adds a bit more value, as long as the recording quality is good..

Students Who Use Facebook Have Lowest Grades

While the connection between using social media and having low grades in school or college has not yet been directly made, researchers conducting a new survey on social media could not help but notice that students who spent most spare time on Facebook tended to have the lowest grades of all those who were studied. The scientists in charge of the research underlined the fact that being an active part of the social media movement did not necessarily mean that these students studied less, or had an intellect below average. It simply means that these correlations need to be explored more thoroughly.

Ohio State University education researcher Aryn Karpinski told LiveScience that students in the survey who were very active on Facebook tended to have a GPA of around 3.0 to 3.5, as opposed to the teens who reported little to no social media activity. Their GPA levels were in the 3.5 to 4.0 category. Karpinski made it clear that such correlations did not imply causality, in that there might very well be other factors at stake there that drove these students to have lower grades.

The expert also noticed that Facebook users spent between 1 and 5 hours each week studying, or otherwise getting ready for school, whereas non-users took a significantly higher interest in their education, studying between 11 and 15 hours per week, and sometimes even more. Karpinski also said that these results did not necessarily mean that social media users were less interested in school. These children could spend more time on non-learning, extra-curricular activities, such as making music, or working, and not necessarily on Facebook.

In addition, the amount of time spent on learning and reading is also dependent on a student's personality. There are those teens who study all day long just for the sake of it, or who are really interested in the objects they are taught in schools and colleges. On the other hand, others simply accomplish the minimum amount of requirements to remain in school, while devoting their time to their hobbies, or simply doing things that have no connection to their education.

Karpinski's research will be presented on April 16th, at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, and will contain details about how students reacted when seeing the questions about their social media behavior. “They're very territorial about their Facebook,” the researcher shared, emphasizing the fact that she tried not to insert any bias, either positive or negative, into the questionnaires.

Article source: Softpedia

How to Successfully Integrate Social Media Into Your Site

While attending Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I had the chance to hear Bob Buch from Digg present tips and case studies on integrating social media marketing into your or your clients’ websites.

Digg Traffic

“Each story that makes it onto the frontpage of Digg gets a minimum of 20,000 clicks back to the publisher. The best stories will get 200,000 - 250,000 clicks. Digg sends 80 million clicks per month to 3rd party websites,” says Buch.

How are other sites benefiting?

* TheOnion gets 600,000 page views per month from Digg users
* Wired.com gets 1 million page views per month from Digg users
* Telegraph.co.uk, the most successful Digg integration partner, and most popular broadsheet newspaper in the UK, gets 5.5 million page views per month from Digg users.
Use the Smart Digg Widget

The Smart Digg widget shows the number of votes to date and is massively more successful than a regular “Digg This” icon without the counter.

Integrated Most Popular Widget
Digg Widget on Telegraph.co.uk

One of the most popular elements on many content websites is a “Most Popular Content” box which highlights 5-10 popular articles based on recent page views. Time.com found that the “Digg Widget” integrated into their site, got 5X more interaction than their own “Most Popular Articles” box and massively increased their own traffic as a result of tons of additional Digging activity.

Facebook Connect

Popular tech news publisher TechCrunch saw registrations increase by 100%, while capturing additional demographic data on their users by integrating Facebook Connect.

While unusually successful, Bob notes that most websites see an increase of 30-80% increase in registration, and an additional 15-80% in comments and user generated content as a result of a clean Facebook Connect integration. You can even import user photos and other demographic data back into your site - such as location, gender, and other information that might otherwise drag down your sign-ups if integrated into your own registration process.

One of the biggest successes of Facebook connect is being able to virally spread your message, by appearing on the “News” wall for users who use post on your site, vote, upload, or otherwise interact with your site.

With each Facebook user having an average of 120 Facebook friends, this is a very quick way to expose your brand to a lot of people, really quickly, while providing “social proof”.

Web site builder SynthaSite rebrands as Yola

SynthaSite, a San Francisco-based company that lets users build Web sites with minimal technical expertise required, has changed its name: it has ditched the corporate-sounding moniker for the more Web 2.0-ish Yola.

"The name SynthaSite has brought us to where we are today, but it won't take us where we want to go," CEO Vinny Lingham said in a release. "We're reaching a global market and need a name that is easy to say, resonates in any language, and captures the creativity and excitement that our users bring to their Web sites."

Yola, which targets individuals and small businesses, comes from the Hindi word for "hatch." It launched early last year and now says it has more than 1.5 million registered users. The name change won't affect any of them, the company said, and if their sites are hosted on SynthaSite subdomains, the URLs will not change.

While still SynthaSite, Yola launched a new user interface last summer and more recently raised a $20 million series B venture round from Reinet Fund.

Developing Personal Relationships With Clients

I’ve experienced the gamut of client relationship types — from all business to too personal — and it took me a little while to discover the right mix of business and personal that works for me. When I was just starting out, my instinct told me to be all business all the time. I wanted to be considered an equal, get respect from my clients and not be in a position to be taken advantage of. Once I had a little experience under my belt and some longer-term client relationships, I adopted a more personal approach, likely because I had more confidence in myself as a business person.

With the increasing popularity of social networking, I find myself crossing paths even more with clients on Facebook and Twitter, and many of the business/personal lines are becoming more blurred. For some, this may be too much client interaction, but this has created amazing opportunities for me. When you work virtually, like I do, it can be a challenge to create a personal element in your business relationships. And social networking sites create an outlet for personal interaction.

Why does it matter? Clients want to hire someone experienced and professional who can get the job done, but they also want someone they feel like they know and can trust. We’re all people first, and giving a little bit of yourself creates a foundation for a thriving relationship. It increases the likelihood that the client will want to work with you again.

Letting your business relationships get a little personal doesn’t mean you need to tell your client personal things about yourself or ask them personal questions. But if you give them a little more – mentioning your weekend plans, asking how their sick sister-in-law is doing, remembering birthdays – you can create a multi-dimensional relationship by which you can accomplish a number of things:
www.webfusion.com

* Create loyalty and trust that overlaps into work situations
* Give clients more reason to refer you because they feel they really know who you are
* Get to know each other better which makes working together easier and more efficient
* Develop opportunities for additional work within the company
* Become more approachable and be able to avoid miscommunication
* Show that you’re human, just like they are

Just like any relationship, the driving factor behind this is communication, whether it’s online or off. And also, like other relationships, this philosophy doesn’t apply across the board. There are some clients who you wouldn’t want to have this type of relationship with, either because of their personal preference or personality issues. It’s important to stay within the comfort levels of both parties, and adjust your relationship to fit each individual client.

Do you have personal relationships with your clients? Has it ever backfired?

Article source: Sitepoint

Facebook Holds too Much Personal Information

A new trend is currently making its way through the various groups and communities that make up the world of Facebook, and they are the lists. Not just any type of lists, but the “25 Random Things”-kind, which basically give users the possibility to fill them out with 25 things they assume people in their social network of friends do not know about. This naturally comes along with the demand to send the list forward to yet other users, which then have to fill it out and pass it on. There are many aspects to consider about this issue, because, even though some say that the practice is annoying, others argue that it helps them find out a lot more things about their friends, and therefore creates a feeling of belonging.

The psychological aspect of the matter is perhaps the most important. Experts maintain that the Internet, in itself, is a very lonely place, and that social networks, no matter how much people they incorporate and regardless of how hard they try to get more and more individuals to communicate, will still be a lousy surrogate for real life. That's why lists such as the “25 Things” one are so popular – they offer people a chance to get to know a little more about the person from another country they spend all day chatting with and so on.

“A lot of people I know were doing the survey and every time I read it, I learned something new about them, my younger brother, neighbor or friend from across campus,” an Appalachian State student says. “I learned so much about my friends when I read their lists, that I thought it would be nice to tell them a bit about myself, too. Seeing things on their list that can also describe me made me realize ... why we're friends,” a 56 year-old woman employed at the Bridgestone Tire company adds.

“I think the Internet gives us a superficial way to know other people. Doing things like this 25 Things note allows us to go a little bit deeper, because we do search for a deeper relationship interpersonally,” Queens University assistant professor in communications John McArthur, who specializes in digital media, explains.

Here are just a few of the group invites that have sprung up against this phenomenon:

“Tired of being tagged in 25 random things over and over again, wasting valuable time reading about your friends' unusual habits that would better be left unknown? Make a stand and show your support against this phenomenon sweeping all of Facebook.”

“Hey, you're a great person, and I'm glad we're friends, but the fact that you love to eat Chinese food with your left hand in San Diego during August just isn't that high up on my 'things I really need to know' list.”

“Join us as we protest mindless repetition and conformation to the mass mailing ways of our society!”

These is only a small number of the messages that attempt to stop the mindless spreading of such useless and repetitive lists throughout the site. There's no way of knowing if the people opposing these forms of befriending will be able to avoid the effects of these lists, as the “tag” function makes it easier for persons using the lists to nominate those against it in their “25 Things.”

Article source: Softpedia

5 international social networks to keep an eye on

Facebook and MySpace may reign supreme in North America, but we can't forget that they don't control every country in the world. Simply put, people from around the globe have different tastes and the major U.S. networks barely capture relevant market share in some countries.

It's a big world out there and believe it or not, Facebook and MySpace don't own it.

China: Xiaonei

Xiaonei is basically a Chinese Facebook clone. The site's design is extremely similar to Facebook's layout and profile options are quite similar, as well. But with a reported $430 million in funding raised earlier this year, it's poised to keep its lead across the world's most populated country, regardless of its similarity to the social network giant.

Xiaonei targets college-age Chinese students. According to figures it released earlier this year, the social network currently has 15 million registered users and almost 9 million active users visiting the site each day. Much like Facebook, the service allows users to share photos and videos and connect with friends at school. Xiaonei also provides a platform for users to share music and movies--a practice that shouldn't come as a shock considering China is one of the leading sources of piracy in the world. Much like Japan's top social network, Mixi, no third-party apps are allowed on the service, though.

France: Skyrock
France's leading social network, Skyrock, may surprise you a bit: it never was supposed to be a social network. Skyrock started as a blog in 2002, which was eventually abandoned in 2007 and turned into a social network. It was the right move.

Skyrock dubs itself the "Free People Network" and generally succeeds in making that moniker hold up. User profiles are freely available with site registration and users can create blog entries that are published on the site's main page. The top 100 bloggers are featured under the site's "Blogs" heading, which also includes a blogger "Hall of Fame" and a running tally of articles--656,000 as of this writing. According to the site's figures at the top of its page, there are currently 20 million blogs and 11.3 million profiles on Skyrock. If you want to create a profile--anyone from any country is allowed to do so--the site does require a quick registration. But if you're looking for privacy, you won't find it here--Skyrock is all about being open and hides nothing from site visitors.

StudiVZ is, well, an almost exact replica of Facebook, but without the company's signature blue design. Instead, the German firm employs a red palette in an attempt to differentiate itself. Regardless, its profile pages look almost exactly the same as Facebook's and its many features mimic the social network giant. Because of that, Facebook initiated an intellectual property infringement case against StudiVZ back in July. So far, nothing has come out of that lawsuit other than posturing on both sides and much to Facebook's chagrin, StudiVZ's 9 million users haven't stopped using the site.

Germany: StudiVZ
Once users register for StudiVZ, it allows them to create a profile and interact with others. They can upload photos and videos, share interests, make updates, and post messages on friends' walls. In fact, most Facebook users would feel right at home using StudiVZ. See what I'm getting at?

Japan-Mixi
Say what you will about the prominence of MySpace and Facebook in the U.S., but in Japan, they barely compete. A major social network called Mixi reigns supreme and there's nothing Facebook nor MySpace have been able to do about it.

Mixi controls almost every aspect of the member's profile design and structure and it doesn't even let third-party developers deploy apps on the site. Membership is restricted to users over 18 years of age and requires an invitation from a current user to sign-up. According to the company, just 5 percent of the site's 15 million users provide their real names and photos and every visitor to a person's profile page is recorded so they can see who has been looking them up.

It's difficult to call Mixi a social network considering such a few number of its members really want to be that "social", but it's considered one nonetheless. The company is sitting atop Japan's group of networks, which includes both MySpace and Facebook, and so far, neither can gain significant ground.

South Korea's Cyworld has been the de facto leader in that country for years. And although the odds are against it, it recently launched a U.S. site in an attempt to expand globally and take Facebook and MySpace on directly.

Cyworld's success has been astounding. The site currently has more than one-third of South Korea's entire population using its service and 90 percent of all South Koreans in their 20s use the site.

South Korea: Cyworld
Once users sign up for the service, they can create their own profile and an avatar, which becomes their digital face to the world. That avatar can then be personalized to modify hair color and general look. Once that's complete, Cyworld allows users to upload photos, exchange virtual gifts, or create a club where others who share the same interests can join and interact. According to the company, its intention is to create a "virtual world." So far, that vision has proven relatively successful.

Article source : CNET

Study: When it comes to influence, bloggers beat friend lists

Facebook likes to trumpet the value of "trusted referrals"--recommendations and ads with the endorsements of members of your friends list. But a new study from Jupiter Research, commissioned by analytics company BuzzLogic, says that consumer purchases are more likely to be influenced by what they read on a blog versus what their social-networking rosters recommend.

Half of all those surveyed who identify as "blog readers" (people who read more than one blog per month, a fifth of total survey respondents) say that blogs are important to them when it comes to making purchasing decisions. But they don't necessarily find them to be all that reliable: only 15 percent of blog readers, and five percent of all those surveyed said that in the past year they had trusted a blog to help them make a purchase decision.

That's still higher than the number of people who said they used social-network recommendations, though: ten percent of "blog readers," and four percent of all those surveyed.

Results of the survey are similar when it comes to advertising: a quarter of "blog readers" say they trust ads on blogs that they read (versus 43 percent on "familiar" or mainstream media sites), but a slightly lower 19 percent say they trust the ads on social networks.

So what does all this mean? Well, it's good news for BuzzLogic, which tracks blogger influence for clients and has seen blog advertising pushed aside a bit on Madison Avenue in favor of "appvertising" and social ads. Aside from that, the real take-away point is that the results seem to indicate most blogs are less mainstream than you might think: Only a fifth of respondents say they read a blog at least once a month.

That's actually really surprising--or maybe blogs have become so ingrained on the Web that people don't even know they're reading them.

Article source: CNET

Study: Email Beats the Pants Off of Social Networks for Marketing

From the “Research that Makes Spammers Giddy” department, Jordan McCollum over at Marketing Pilgrim points to an interesting new study from Ball State University’s Center for Media Design and ExactTarget. The study, Messaging Behaviors, Preferences, and Personas looked at how different groups of people interact with media and which sales channels work best to reach them.

The researchers found that almost universally, direct mail and email marketing were far more persuasive at getting people to make purchases than any sort of social network advertising.

“One of the key findings in this research is that 18- to 34-year-olds claim they are more likely to be influenced to make purchases based on email marketing messages and direct mail than marketing messages on social networks,” Mike Bloxham, the director of insight and research at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design, said in a press release. “It is too easy to assume that the media consumers choose for their own news, information and entertainment are, by default, the best media to use for marketing messages. This is a dangerous assumption to make in a time when consumers are becoming increasingly aware of their level of control over their media experiences.”

That’s terrible news for social networks. They’re the preferred hangouts for those in many of the market segments that the study looked at, including teens, college students, and “young homemakers,” but sales messages on social sites just don’t resonate with consumers. In some cases, advertising on social networks is actually offensive to users, who feel that it is a violation of what they look at as private sales channels. It’s also bad news for our inboxes, as this sort of study validates spam as a effective tool for unscrupulous marketers.


Some key findings from the study below about their six persona types:
Wired Consumers - 20% have subscribed for marketing communications via SMS, which is a higher rate than any other group. However, they only want to be bothered with urgent customer service issues, not sales pitches.
Young Homemakers - More than 50% use social networks and SMS, but respond better to direct mail and email marketing.
Retired Consumers - 81% have purchased online and 94% have been influenced by some form of direct marketing to make a purchase. Read: the target market for sleazy spammers.
College Students - The study found that college students are very spam-savvy and thus think that private communication channels such as SMS and social networks should be off limits for marketers. This is perhaps the most valuable demographic, but good luck reaching them where they live.
Teens - Use social networking more than any other group but surprisingly, they’re more likely to make a purchase from direct mail, followed by email, SMS and then social network sites.
Established Professionals - Among the members of this group, women are more likely than men to use new digital media channels such as IM, SMS and social networking, but both genders are heavy online shoppers, with 92% having made an Internet purchase.

Where do you fall among those groupings? Are you more likely to respond to a direct sales pitch, email marketing, or marketing that comes via social channels like IM or social networks? Should social networks be off limits for marketers? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Article source: Sitepoint

Muxlim plans Muslim world’s first virtual world

Muslim social network Muxlim.com, live since late 2006, is planning to launch a Muslim-oriented virtual world not unlike Second Life. The idea is that something tailored to the Muslim world would be allowed through the IP-blocks of countries like United Arab Emirates which currently stops access to virtual worlds and online games considered unsuitable or offensive to Muslim culture. The virtual world is said to launch in 4-6 weeks and will “allow the opportunity to wear a hijab, and go to prayer rooms.” Muxlim itself is your standard social network offering community features, blogs and video sharing. The revenue model will be VIP accounts, virtual gifts, virtual furniture/clothes, themes/styles, profile applications, advertising, branded communities and physical merchandise like t-shirts.

Although there are well over one billion people who identify themselves as Muslim, I see this site as appealing primarily to slightly more ‘westernised’ Muslim world. In the UK alone there are over three million Muslims with an estimated £21 billion annual spending power (with a fair proportion of this oil-related money).

Ashar Saeed, vice-president of Muxlim.com reckons that by setting up a Muslim virtual world they’ll be able to attract sponsorship from the likes of brands like Coca-Cola, which already advertise in other online worlds. Launched in December 2006 in Finland, the site 1.5m unique monthly visitors and is backed by Finnish and Swedish money, sepcifically Swedish VC Rite Internet Ventures (also backer of Nebula, the largest Finnish hosting provider and Nyheter24.se, the Swedish online tabloid).

Article source: Techcrunch

10 Years Of Internet Images

2008 is the tenth anniversary of a project to map the Internet. Undertaken by Lumeta, the effort was undertaken as a long-range research project to study the growth of the online world.

The mapping project isn't attempting to map every computer that connects to the Internet. Rather, the project gathers routing data to all backbone routers hosted by ISPs. The company didn't scan all the way down to individual hosts on purpose. "That would just be like a big huge blob," says Michael Markulec, Chief Operating Officer of Lumeta. Thus, each node represented on a map may be connected to a handful of computers, or may have a large corporate network behind it.

The map shows only the shortest path to each router. Lumeta says these paths can change over time as routers are reconfigured. Maps can be constructed based on a variety of data points, including IP address blocks, geography, Top Level Domains (TLDs) and service providers.

The images in this gallery were created using Lumeta's IPsonar software. They include images from 1998, when the project was launched, to recent images of IPv6 nodes. Between 1998 and 2003, the number of nodes on the Internet doubled, and by 2008 nodes had increased five times.

Images of note include maps of geographic regions such as the Middle East, where countries that may be light-years apart in terms of politics and government are just a few hops away from each other on a backbone network. Another image shows the affects of NATO bombing in Yugoslavia in 1999, as routers go offline and traffic re-routes itself.

Article source: informationweek.com

Third Largest Social Network Goes Mobile

Hi5, the third largest social network in the world, according to a comScore study, announced that it had expanded to include the mobile platform as well. Users from all over the world will have the possibility to login to their favorite (or maybe not favorite, if we’re to believe the numbers, but close enough) social network by using a mobile phone. Moreover, hi5 assured that the 26-language support available on computer access to the network would also be included with the new platform.

“Mobile use represents a huge opportunity for social networking and this functionality is particularly relevant to hi5's international user base who are more advanced than their U.S. counterparts in terms of mobile device usage. We are providing the tools for users to connect and share information with their hi5 network from almost anywhere in the world,” said Ramu Yalamanchi, CEO of hi5.

Moreover, the global mobile market is offering greater opportunities, since, in the US, mobile phone sales are reportedly on the decrease. A couple of weeks ago, the NPD Group released a report that showed that the mobile business had just registered its lowest peak – a 13% drop in sales during the second quarter of 2008 compared with last year. In other parts of the globe, the accessibility to mobile devices is under development, so the chances are greater for hi5 to enlarge its non-US audience.

The company will also get contracts with local advertisers, which, in turn, will offer better quality ads to hi5 subscribers. “In addition, as we see the number of users accessing hi5 via their mobile phones increase, it will open up the opportunity to roll out hyper-localized advertising.”

hi5 seems to understand that the US market is allotted to rivals MySpace and Facebook. This is the main reason for which the company is trying to make the most of its localization business method. “Because we've focused on the international opportunity from the start, we've developed a very acute sense of the unique behaviors and needs of users in different countries,” Yalamanchi underscored on a previous occasion.

Article Source Softpedia

Social Networking, a Mystery for Half the Population

A survey performed by research company Synovate showed that 58% of the people questioned didn't even know what a social network was. This result is all the more surprising given the fact that, nowadays, social networking is considered, among people with an Internet connection, to be as popular as, say, email.

The survey took place in 17 countries, the inhabitants of the Netherlands being the most social networking savvy. Eighty-nine percent of them answered in the positive to the question of the operator, of whether they knew what social networking was. Japan came in second, with 71% affirmative answers, followed by the US, with a 70% rate of knowledge of social networks among the respondents.

Reading into the statements released by the company after the survey, officials probably expected more Americans to be aware of the technological advancements regarding socializing. Synovate's Senior Vice President of the US-based Consumer Insights group, Bob Michaels, also offered an explanation for the US being topped by the other two countries. “While a majority of Americans have access to computers there are still others, particularly seniors and immigrants, who do not. Online social networking just is not part of their world.”

Twenty-six percent of the 13,000 respondents said they were members of a social network. Here too, the Netherlands took the lead again, with a 49% rate of social networking, being followed by the United Arab Emirates (46%), Canada (44%), and the US (40%). The positioning of the first runner-up is perhaps the most surprising, but it can be easily explained – in a country where traditions sometimes shape personal relationships, the online space is the only one that allows uncensored socializing.

The survey also showed that people have gradually lost their interest in online social networking. 36% of the current members said that their interest level was dropping. The most weary of Facebook, MySpace & co. were the Japanese users, 55% of them saying that social networks had lost the importance they once had. Slovakia came in second, with 48%, followed by Canada, with 47%. Oppositely, Indonesian and French users said that their interest was on the increase (82% and 79% respectively).

“When you're in the world of marketing — reading about it, planning campaigns, researching people — it's sometimes easy to overlook the basics. So we started our study by simply asking 'do you know what online social networking is?' And that's where our first myth was debunked. It turns out social networking is not taking over the world. Well, not yet anyway.” Global Head of Media Research for Synovate, Steve Garton, concluded by saying.

From Sitepoint