Salesforce.com tries to bring social networking to the workplace
Salesforce.com built a billion-dollar company by allowing companies to ditch their CRM software and bringing CRM to the cloud. Now it has its sights set on perhaps an even bigger feat: bringing social media to the enterprise.
Yesterday, the company announced that it will be launching a new service called Salesforce Chatter in 2010. Think of it as Facebook for the enterprise: a social networking service for companies with an application platform to boot.
Facebook wins $711 million anti-spam lawsuit. But social spam is here to stay.
By now everyone online is accustomed to receiving and filtering spam in their inboxes, but recent spamming attacks on social sites like Facebook have caught many by surprise. Facebook is hoping to change all that, with a court win this week against uber spammer Sanford Wallace.
Facebook hopes that a $711 million fine and the threat of jail time will not only sideline Wallace, but function as a deterrent to future social spammers. But let's be honest. That's not going to happen.
Google adding music to search
Google pretty much has its bases covered. Looking for an image? There's Google Images. Looking for a video? Video results appear in search. As do products.
But one thing has been noticeably absent: music. Which is not an insignificant fact given that two of the top 10 search queries in the United States are music-related. But Google being Google, it has a plan for music.
George Clooney, Facebook and prostate exams
Celebrities and social media seem to go together like cheese and wine for good reason: social media is one of the most powerful mediums for celebrities to connect with fans, increase their visibility and maintain their personal brands. Oh, and stoke their egos.
From Ashton Kutcher to Lindsay Lohan, Michael Phelps to Shaquille O'Neal (oh, and Kanye West), the celebrities you love (or love to hate) are increasingly on Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media platforms. But that doesn't mean that everyone in Hollywood is starstruck with poking and tweeting.
MySpace acquires iLike
After days of chatter, MySpace made its acquisition of social music discovery startup iLike official today. The company, which is best known for its popular Facebook music app, will see its social discovery technology applied in new areas such as gaming, according to MySpace CEO Owen van Natta. To that end, iLike was acquired by MySpace Inc., not MySpace's digital music joint venture.
According to the acquisition announcement, the current iLike experience that users have come to love will be "unaffected by
the acquisition" and iLike will continue to be headquarted in Seattle.
20+ more mind-blowing social media statistics
The social media statistics I posted a few weeks ago seemed to strike a chord amongst the digital community, especially in highlighting just how big an issue this particular area of online currently is. So I’m happy to say that I’ve trawled around the internet to bring you some more snippets of useful data and awesome figures.
Facebook and Bebo UK users compared
As a bit of a statistical nerd, I like to keep an eye on the latest statistics on social network usage. Anybody who reads the Tamar blog will know that I regularly report on how Facebook in particular is growing, but until recently I had very little to compare it against.
Finding accurate and up-to-date information on MySpace is nye-on impossible (unless I'm missing a trick?) and Bebo proved fairly hard to find as well. We've all heard that Bebo is supposed to be the social network of choice for kids, and Facebook proves much more popular for the older generation, but do the numbers back this up?
20 + mind-blowing social media statistics
Social media remains the hot topic of the digital world and I often get asked about the various statistics involved. This in itself is fairly difficult, as this particular online sphere is constantly shifting, evolving and growing at an astronomical rate. But I’ve pulled together some interesting (and hopefully useful) data for a couple of the bigger players in the market...
The Friendster Lesson: Being first to market isn't always best
Did faulty servers kill Friendster? Discussions of Friendster may sound like ghosts from social networking's past, but the site's founder Jonathan Abrams is back in the news today, telling the LA Times today that Friendster got too big too fast, and attributes his company's downfall to poor functionality resulting from exponential growth.
Abrams, who's now working on start-up Socializr, says that MySpace was able to eat Friendster's lunch because of better targeting and reliability:
"They opened it up to minors, which hadn't even occurred to me for the legal and safety reasons... the real reason that Friendster got supplanted by MySpace in the U.S. was that MySpace's website just worked and Friendster's didn't."
While dependability is key to a website's success, Abrams is still missing the big picture on what makes social networks stick around online.
Michael Jackson's memorial service will test the limits of online video
News of Michael Jackson's death last month nearly shut down the Internets with interest and confusion as people went online to check and discuss the news. Today is the pop singer's memorial service in Los Angeles and online news channels and video hubs are preparing for similar levels of traffic.
Everyone - from the BBC to USA Today and MySpace - is planning to live stream the service, which is today at 10:00 PST at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. If viewer interest comes anywhere near the level expected by these sites, the whole Internet might shut down. Alternately, it could illustrate the potential of online video left untouched by profit motives.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
