LetsBuyIt Blog

In addition to the social community HalloHund, which we had talked about in a previous article, we have discovered a new and English network for dog-lovers called Doggyspace. According to several sources (netzzeitung, msnbc, time) there are about 700 dogs registered with a goal of 2 millions registered dogs (or owners that behave like their dogs) by the end of the year (we can only find 551 doggies while looking at openly accessable “doggy friends“). Best of luck to Levi Thornton, the founder, for that venture and for those that want to share the problems, experiences and joy of their dogs with others definitely should keep an eye out for doggyspace.com

In the last two weeks we have received some interesting statistics about social networks and webpages in Europe, namely Germany, that might interest you:

First of all it needs mentioning that there are currently around 149 social networks in Germany according to the ranking - list of zweinull.cc.

The Forsa-Survey, which was initiated by Sevenone Interactive, concluded that the average German only visits eight sites per month. Such a high loyalty makes it very difficult for new websites to become popular, because the average man checks out 21 new sites and the women check out 13 new sites on an average per month. To see what these main websites are and which age group is loyal to which site, see the statistics.

Another interesting fact is that according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 85% of the German internet users are in some sort of social network. What makes it interesting is that these people are willing to rather receive targeted advertising instead of having to pay for the service however don’t like to be monitored/tracked while surfing the internet. In correlation to the previously mentioned loyalty of internet users, German are interested in staying the same social network for the entire life instead of joining too many new networks. To read the entire analysis of this interesting PWC study click here.

The next generation of dog-lovers is here. Like Facebook or Studivz, www.hallohund.de is a social networking platform for everyone wanting to present the world his or her fourlegged friend on the Internet. Here, Users can find out everything they is to know about dogs.

They can get beauty tips, information about their dog’s proper diat, post photos and even meet other dog owners to go for a walk with. In the categories Hunde-Basics and Hunde-Welt, people can read user letters and get informed about upcoming activities. Dog experts and vets give advise, and in the Hunde-Market you can buy anything to do with dogs; all the way from books to four-poster dog beds.

The best part is that as a registered user, you also have the option to individually design your and of course your dog’s own profile, write a dog diary, and ask dog experts questions. I am starting to ask myself who the dog is here?

The word Social Networking takes on a whole different meaning with www.hallohund.de. It is now not only target towards humans to keep in contact with friends and family but also at their K9 friends. Now Burda has really managed to link the print media with the online world!? I am very curious how that is going to work out!!

Nearly a quarter of upstream clicks to the top 19 social sites originated from one place on the Web, according to a report from Hitwise.

Social networking sites are feeding off each other’s good will, according to a new report by competitive intelligence service company Hitwise.

Facebook’s traffic has doubled in just over 18 months, but MySpace still receives most of the Web’s social networking traffic. MySpace captured 79.7% of social networking traffic in April, according to figures released by Hitwise on Monday. Facebook accounted for 11.47% of social networking visits, while MySpace alterative Bebo drew 1.28% of the traffic last month, according to the Hitwise report.

MySpace visits rose 70% from April 2006 to April 2007, while the percentage increase for the lesser-used sites was much more dramatic, according to Hitwise. Facebook visits increased 126% from April 2006 and Bebo’s traffic rose 184% from last year, Hitwise announced.

Most companies are more concerned with blocking Web site categories, such as those labeled “adult” or “gambling,” than with targeting individual Web sites, a new report notes.

When the Defense Department recently banned department personnel from visiting social networking and entertainment sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and 11 others, it cited bandwidth constraints and security concerns as the primary criteria. In the business world, however, while these sites don’t exactly boost productivity, companies are much more concerned with shutting out banner and pop-up ads as well as adware likely to install cookies on company-owned PCs.

This Silicon Valley start-up has taken social networking and geolocalisation to a new dimension, the mobile phones. This Boost Mobile System (only available in the US) not only provides the social networks with all its usual facets (communities, IM, blogging, etc.) but it traces each member via GPS in real time on a map. On the spot you can chat with your friend near you, everybody knows when the other is the neighbourhood or happens to be in the club that you thought about going.

“Using location-based technologies, Loopt lets you know where your friends are by automatically updating maps on your mobile handset. Loopt even lets you send messages to nearby friends or receive automatic alerts when they’re nearby so that you never miss an opportunity to meet. Loopt also lets you journal your life so that your friends can see what you’re up to. “

Now you are not only being myspaced, facebooked, digged, chatted-up but also traced via GPS. You may like it or not but it is definitely interesting from an entrepreneurial view.

I have been to the Film Festival in Cannes last week: sun, great movies and stars!

I’ve been really amazed by the increasing links there are between those kind of happenings and the web usages.

Appart from of course the real-time information and images broadcasting of the event itself - you can also see extracts from selected movies - two main trends are to be highlited:

• MySpace sponsored one of the beach in partnsership with Smiley: a very nice space with a stage, where artists, actors, producers could meet and some events like movie projection or music concerts were displayed. The atmosphere and events were also relayed on the web.
• I have met a lot of producers and directors who had planned physical meetings in Cannes through networks like aSmallWorld and.. really met and had instersting and very professional meetings!

The 60th Cannes Film Festival has really been a proof that social networking is really becoming an efficient business media, at least in certain industries..