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TACOMA DAILY INDEX — Oct 28 — The social networking space is getting crowded with sites like RYZE.com, LinkedIn.com, SixDegrees.com, MeetUp.com, Friendster.com, Tickle.com, Tribe.com and even one called DudeCheckThisOut.com. Technology analyst Mitch Ratcliffe has studied social networks extensively.  He writes about Internet trends and politics on his Web log at RatcliffeBlog.com. "I was on the Board of Directors for Match.com. For the first couple of years, you have actually no idea what is going to work. You don't know how often people are going to come back…It turns out they would come back generally three or four times before they <cease coming> back for one reason or the other. There's a lot of experimentation amongst all these companies to see how much people use <social networking sites>, what the size of the typical network grows to, and whether there is enough interaction between those networks to drive a real business model. I don't know if any one of these sites will be able to compete without buying and consolidating all the other network services. Most of the companies that are involved in this are going to have to do something that is open source, that allows people to share this information across networks, or no one of them are going to become a viable place for people to stay…Consolidation is already starting to go on at the very genetic level between all these sites. Information is shared through protocols like "friend of a friend," which is a standardized way of expressing information about the relationships between users on a site and OPML, which is a feed that allows you to track what other people are reading — a sort of logging of blogging. They are all going to compete to be the place that is the aggregator of choice."

The full article was originally published at Tacoma Daily Index, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Well, Google certainly has the resources to gobble up more than a few players, but is the revenue potential there to justify it?

MARKET WATCH — Oct 27 — Apparently, about 4 million college students across the country are "facebooking" their classmates, whether to connect with them or just get more information about them.  News Corp and Viacom have shown interest in meeting with young Mark Zuckerberg, the 21-year-old Harvard dropout who started Facebook in his dorm in February 2004, and came into MarketWatch's San Francisco TV studios recently for an interview. Zuckerberg started the Facebook – essentially an online student directory — while he was a sophomore at Harvard. The psychology major tells me that it took about 10 days — during finals — for him to build the site. He decided to take a leave from Harvard his junior year and move to Palo Alto, Calif.  In the fall of 2004 former-PayPal-CEO-turned-hedge-fund-manager-and-angel-investor Peter Thiel — whose fund is up 60%-plus this year — gave Zuckerberg $500,000 to buy servers to support the growing audience base at Facebook. By 2005 Zuckerberg had raised $12.7 million, with Accel Partners leading the VC funding round with a valuation of about $100 million. Zuckerberg told me that the fee site is profitable and makes money from advertising (8.5 million uniques).  Users spend more time on Facebook than MySpace. ~70% of the nearly 5 million registered users log on daily. Zuckerburg met with Chris DeWolfe, MySpace CEO who saw the selling of his company to a big media company as a natural progression. (I heard the next step for DeWolfe is to launch a MySpace music label with Interscope Records.)  Zuckerberg doesn't agree entirely, stating that technology and engineering should be considered a big priority at today's media companies.  "What drives the site is an offline dynamic and culture around it." What he means is that the Facebook communities revolve around a particular school. He can walk out into the school grounds and see everyone he knows in the Facebook. If Friendster is any guide, it's difficult to maintain a lead in this rapidly changing media business. What happens when the Facebook saturates the 8 million college-student market?

The full article was originally published at Investors.com, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: As TV struggles to keep it's younger audiences hitched, advertisers will seek out the likes of Facebook for advertising.  This will become an ever more valuable property as it penetrates the most valuable segment of the younger demographics; college bound youngsters and alumni. What irks me is that I worked on hooking up the UC system with an early version of Plaxo in 2000; 'eturn' was set on becoming a self updating address book for the masses.  Alas, eturn, Planetall, DigitalMe, Swifttouch and Contact.com all headed south in the dotcom crash. 

ASBURY PARK PRESS — Oct 27 — According to Evan Katz, finding love on the Net need no longer be a dirty little secret.  Everybody's doing it so there's nothing to be embarrassed about.  It's a simple matter of ease and cost efficiency, Katz says. After all, admission is cheap.  Because text-chatting prohibits eye contact, users can miss the nonverbal cues that reveal more about a potential date than mere text on a screen, Katz admits.  "The strangest case I've heard was of a man who didn't bother to tell his date that he was a paraplegic until he showed up," Katz says. "It's understandable why he held back that information, but it's hard to overcome the surprise when you first meet someone."  Common-sense precautions also can help newbies avoid dastardly daters, Katz says. Some common tips include slowing down emotional involvement and being wary of people who seem too good to be true.  "Use the same cautions you'd use if you exchanged numbers with a stranger at Starbucks. Meet out in public, take your own transportation, that sort of thing."

Mark Brooks: TRUE lit a firestorm around online personals safety when it started offering background checks and initiated a legislative campaign to force online personals sites to state clearly on their home pages if they did not do background checks on members.  Next up…they are bringing into question the validity of competing sites personality profiles.  TRUE offers the only validated test, of course.

PR NEWSWIRE — Oct 24 — PrivateTel, a developer of privacy-oriented telecommunications solutions, announced of Daniel Kaluzny as CEO.  He will be charged with overseeing PrivateTel's portfolio of privacy-oriented solutions that ensure safer and more secure communications for online dating, social networking, real estate, and e-commerce Web sites.

The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Email me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com if you would like a copy of the overview of anonymous phone calling services providers for online personals companies. 

PR WEB — Oct 26 — After being locked up in the Big Brother house for weeks on end this summer, a celebrity speed dater is now well and truly "out" and looking for a great night on the town. With the new craze sweeping the globe, what better way to meet 20+ single gay men than at a top speed dating event. Hosted by Xfactordates.com at London's No.1 Gay Members Club "The Shadow Lounge" in Soho. Since 2003, over 26,000 people enlisted the help of Xfactordates in their quest to find a partner; 30 cities.  RELEASE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Speed dating provides instant gratification for daters. 

GANNETT NEWS — October 25 — The tabloids tell us that since Ashton Kutcher, 27, and Demi Moore, 42, have married, older women are the hottest new thing. A dating site called http://www.maydecember.net is even capitalizing off the phenomenon by bringing together those "seeking age gap relationships.

Mark Brooks: There's something inordinately attractive about an older woman who has looked after herself, knows what she wants and knows how to get it. We'll see more of this trend.

OH MY NEWS — Oct 26 — Netscape released its code as open source, and Firefox was born to become a distant No. 2 in the browser space.  A new group has created "Flock" based on Firefox.  Del.icio.us is wildly popular utility site for "social bookmarking," that lets users store and share their favorite site links. Digg, a tech news Web site, allows members instead of editors decide which stories get on the homepage.  Flock adds a social networking dimension; integrating blogging, Flickr support, synchronization with Del.icio.us, and other goodies.  Its blogging tools let users write and publish blog posts from within the browser.  Its current version is still under heavy development and buggy (not ideal for downloading just yet). FULL ARTICLE @ OH MY NEWS

Mark Brooks: Is there an opportunity for convergence with an online dating site or social networking site here?

UNION LEADER — Oct 25 — Social networking may be a close cousin of online dating, but it is much more low-key – attracting a totally different demographic. More online dating sites may be moving toward social networking as a way to keep members on the site. One of the first social networking sites that took off was Friendster, which relied on the "perception of exclusivity" to drive its membership numbers sky high, according to Mark Brooks, editor of industry blog Online Personals Watch. Brooks worked with friend and Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams in 2003, and said much of his friend's success is owed to timing and a few simple observations. "He looked at the real world and he modeled it, and one of the things he noticed is there are certain people that are the connecters," Brooks said. Friendster did not try too hard, Brooks said. But it allowed people to join only when they were invited – thus feeding on the desire for exclusivity – and let people meet others through friends, thus ensuring, for the most part, that these friends of friends were legitimate. Facebook has virtually locked up the college market. MySpace.com started as a network for musicians to advertise and expand their fan base, but is fast becoming the largest social networking site in operation. "They're out-Friendstering Friendster, which is absolutely amazing" Brooks said. But business networking sites, such as Linkedin.com, will likely surpass them all in terms of lifespan, revenue and popularity, according to Marc Lesnick who runs the Internet Dating Conference, the largest industry event for online dating and social networking Web sites.

The full article was originally published at Union Leader, but is no longer available.

THE CRIMSON — Oct 25 — Facebook.com unveiled its long-awaited expanded photo feature last week. Facebook.com is the 10th most trafficked site on the internet, with over 8.5 million unique visitors in September.  Although other networking sites such as Friendster and MySpace have long allowed users to upload multiple photos, Hughes promised in September that the site would offer "more photos than any other comparable site." Facebook.com is now the first of its kind to offer unlimited capacity. Murtaza M. Hussain, a spokesman for online social networking newcomer XuQa.com, said that unlimited photo uploading is more a catchphrase than a reality since most people would upload few photos.

The full article was originally published at Crimson, but is no longer available.

UNION LEADER — Oct 25 — For all the heartaches and horror stories – and there are a few, to be sure – Deborah still gets a buzz from meeting men on the Internet. "It's a real crazy soup," she said. "But it's so interesting." Many online dating sites are swarming with married men, she said. Deborah knows how to spot these guys. They're the ones who ask to meet at lunchtime, or some other strange hour. A few weeks ago, after posting an ad on Craigslist.org, a free and totally uncensored catch-all, Deborah started talking with a pleasant-sounding suitor from Derry. They met for coffee, and she agreed to go back to his place, where he suggested they watch a movie… From now on, she said, she'll be staying away from the free sites. Those are the sketchiest of all, she said.

The full article was originally published at Union Leader, but is no longer available.