CircleMe to join myself!

We had MySpace, Netlog, Hyves, … sorry, they are all still up and running social platform but once they were really hot, now not anymore (or at least less hot than they used to be, or only hot in very limited geographical areas or with special interest groups). The war of the social platform…for the moment won by Facebook (as you know: If Facebook was a country it with be the 3rd country in the world), but maybe the war on platforms is moving away from its true value. Facebook will remain big and in business for at least a couple of years. Google+ is growing, but still doesn’t touch Facebook knees! So it’s time to rethink te platform war, and come up with something else…location based (was one), social commerce (was another), … and now we have CircleMe (yet another).

CircleMe uses your Facebook (f.i.) as its data platform and don’t focus on you(r status updates) or your friends, but focus on your interests and likes in different categories. This way you get an overview on what you’re interested in….and then who shares these interests with you! It’s another way of connecting people! A 360 circle of you are, what you do, what you love doing, … seems to be the new approach for social networking! Look at the Facebook Timeline (even WordPress installed a Timeline theme – maybe should look into that! )….

CircleMe should take this up a notch, as I understand it, because CircleMe works with your interests, likes, … to find connections that have a similar circle/interest. So basically you’re looking for yourself! Again interesting to see where this will take us…but a nice example on semantic and executing web use!

Be shure to check this introduction movies on how it works and the basic philosophy behind CircleMe.

You can sign up for an invitation to the beta version here!
Once you’re in and have a profile, you can share your CircleMe through your Facebook. So CircleMe uses a different approach than Facebook and rather collaborates then battles for the platform! To be continued….

How Charlie Sheen makes money on Twitter….are you?

Charlie Sheen only uses Twitter for a week, but has a world record behind his name….24h to reach 1 mio followers. The first Twitter user who reaches 1 mio followers in this short period of time….and now a few days later already 1,7 mio (and I’m not one of them!…are you?)

Off course for marketeers this is a golden boy…and Charlie knows it. He hopes to make 1 mio $ with his Tweets. Well, not his own tweets of course, he commercial tweets, which you will all read but forget they have a commercial message! Almost 5000 celebrities are commercial Twitter users, who make money just by being on Twitter.  The company Ad.Ly manages 1000 of those celebs commercial tweets or endorsed Tweets. Exact numbers we don’t have, but Kim Kardashian claims to earn 10000 $ when an Ad.ly Tweet is posted.

Off course, not only Twitter is used, Facebook, Google and MySpace are social media channels which show celeb endorsed posts. This might be easy….BUT there is a second way on how commercial messages are being brought to you by social media: your friends! The World of Mouth as you can read in ‘Socialnomics‘ (by Erik Qualman). But this world of mouth can be (and off course not all the time) commercially inspired.

For Instance, if you look at “mommyblogs” where young moms start a non commercial blog just to connect to the outside world and share their experiences and knowledge. A couple of those blogs are becoming very popular having a couple of 100 unique visitors a day….and are becoming interesting for advertisers. This can be in a commercial way, by adding an ad on the blog (and paying the ‘mommy’), but there is also a more subtile way where the ‘endorsement agency steps in and asks the blogmommy to write about a certain product or service in one of her blog post (and again the ‘mommy’ is being paid).  The difference is off course reader perception, where an ad is obvious, but a blog is not….Remember the figures on social media: 78% of the people trusts his social network/peers when it comes to products or services.

Is your product of service being endorsed already? And I think it’s better to endorse through world of mouth endorsement then through celeb endorsement….(and it will cost you less as well!)  Off course, when your consumers post without an incentive doesn’t cost you money….

MySpace for sale

a day after Newscorp launched The Daily, it wants to sell MySpace, one of the pioneers of social networks.

It isn’t a big surprise since the let off 500 staff members last month….but MySpace once was a big player in social networking with more than  60 million hits a month in 2007. But most people exchanged their MySpace profile for a Facebook profile.  And as a result it only has 4 mio hits a month in 2011, but still has a strong market share with musicians and new musical and creative talent. Off course this isn’t the most interesting group of people for Rupert Murdoch, owner of Newscorp, who bought MySpace in 2005 (for 500 mio Dollar).

It looks like normal economical law of Supply and Demand (Adam Smith) also counts in the flat world.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr,… are hot and trendy, and people move to those sites, and with potential customers shifting, advertisers will shift as well…and MySpace isn’t that lucrative anymore apparently…
Is this  the first step into building a social network monopoly of Facebook…..