Year in Review for Social Networking

The recent article, Year in Review 2008: Social networks grapple with the money question, does a great job summarizing some of the activity with the major networking sites. Below are some of the highlights:

• Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign rocketed to victory on many of the social-media tools that were still getting denounced as fads just a year ago.

• Facebook and MySpace, the world's two biggest social networks, launched elaborate voter outreach initiatives.

• Digg's traffic soared as political news reached a fever pitch.

• Twitter has not yet produced a business model. Facebook and Digg are not yet profitable. MySpace appears to be doing better, likely due to the fact that it's been owned by News Corp. since 2005 and has big-media advertising connections at its disposal.

• Location-based mobile social networks didn't create the sensation that many had expected.

• Pownce, a would-be Twitter rival, closed up shop entirely and sold its assets to blog software company Six Apart

• The beleaguered Yahoo shuttered its social-networking experiment, Mash.

• AOL bought Socialthing and Goowy--and in a whopping $850 million deal, acquired Bebo, a social network that counts most of its popularity in the U.K. and Ireland. Also, Twitter bought Summize, Comcast bought Plaxo, and social-app companies like the Social Gaming Network started amassing portfolios of widgets purchased from independent developers.

• The recession recently stalled Facebook's plan to allow some of its employees to cash out stock options. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe has expressed concern about his company's ability to continue growing its ad-revenue footprint. Twitter and Digg, along with other players in the market like RockYou, Meebo, Yelp, LinkedIn, and Ning, have filled their coffers with venture funding and are hoping to keep growing while they wait out the storm.

For more information, make sure to read Year in Review 2008: Social networks grapple with the money question.

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Comments

[Sheila]

Wow, I find it amazing that facebook and digg aren't yet profitable!