social network

A Denver company is putting itself on the map with a new mobile application called the "Snocator," a nifty piece of software that displays more than 70 maps for North American ski resorts and shows the user where they are on the map, where they're going, plus weather and on-mountain restaurant information.

The admission by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg -- that the social network's optimum revenue model remains a mystery four years after its launch -- has raised some eyebrows. Despite claiming that it will double its revenue to between $300m and $350m this year, the question remains as to when, if ever, Facebook will turn a profit.

“I use Twitter to follow key journalists all the time… never to pitch them.” That’s a note my colleague Luca Penati, who heads up our global technology practice, sent me following last week’s Twitter Bootcamp for PR webinar. That, in less than 140 characters, gets to the heart of how Twitter should be used to conduct media relations.

As IBM sets out to launch its Bluehouse corporate social network to compete with Cisco and Google, word comes that Facebook and MySpace are the most popular social-networking sites for mobile-phone users.

According to ABI Research, nearly half (46 percent) of those who use social networks have also visited a social network through a mobile phone. Of these, nearly 70 percent have visited MySpace, and another 67 percent visited Facebook. No other social-networking site reached 15 percent mobile adoption.

On the Internet, popularity often draws the attention of hackers. So it is not surprising that Facebook has become the target of a spate of attacks, just as the membership on the site has swelled to about 100 million active users worldwide.

In recent days, many Facebook users have seen a sharp increase in spam, some of it pretty racy. Over the weekend, several Facebook users contacted this newspaper saying that their accounts appeared to have been hijacked, and some said their accounts had been deactivated.

Yahoo officially announced its geo-social network, Fire Eagle, late Tuesday. The system has been in private beta since March with selected developers, and already hosts a raft of third-party applications.

Fire Eagle allows users to store their location data on the Web for access by any network service. For example, wireless users can upload their location and share it with family, friends or colleagues. It could make short work of finding someone in a crowded venue.

Yahoo calls Fire Eagle a "geo-aware" platform.

When the executives of social-networking Web site Facebook sued a German-based business that had launched a copycat site, it was accepted as a good move -- but was Facebook just sour over an offer gone bad?

Facebook officials filed suit against StudiVZ, a Germany-based social-networking Web site that is a near clone of Facebook, in a California court, saying the German site infringed on Facebook's look, feel, design and services.

Asia's leading social network may be getting ready to give its U.S. competitors a run for the money. Friendster, the ninth largest Web site in the world based on traffic, has received $20 million in funding and hired a Google veteran as CEO.

On Tuesday, Friendster announced Robert Kimber as its new CEO to lead Friendster's global business and guide operations in Asia and the U.S.

For all the hype about social networking Web sites, the most popular and successful way to network over the Internet is still the oldest: e-mail. If it's organized properly, boring old e-mail can reveal as much or more information about the people you know and their relationships with you as hipper services such as MySpace or Facebook.

“Social Networks will be like air“
-Charlene Li of Forrester Research