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Facebook expects flood of traffic from teenagers, adults

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comScore released the results of a study on the visitation to Facebook.com which showed the site grew to 26.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. in May 2007, marking an 89-percent increase versus the same month last year. The dramatic growth comes on the heels of Facebook.com’s decision in September 2006 to open up registration to the general public, a change from the previous policy requiring a valid email address from a university or a selected group of secondary schools and businesses.

In the months prior to allowing open registration, Facebook.com’s traffic hovered at approximately 14 million visitors per month. However, after Facebook opened its doors to the general public, visitation accelerated to reach a level of 26.6 million visitors in May 2007, up 89 percent versus the same month last year and 100 percent versus September 2006.

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Originally posted on July 6, 2007 @ 9:25 am

Change.org aims to turn Facebook into a vehicle for political change

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changeorg.jpgChange.org, a social network for political and social activism, launched an integration of its service with Facebook.com. The integrated service allows Facebook’s 27 million members to create grassroots political action groups and raise money for all 2008 presidential campaigns.

Change.org’s portal on Facebook allows users to raise money for any of the presidential campaigns as well as for “Draft Funds” that allow supporters to donate to potential candidates such as Al Gore, Fred Thompson, and Michael Bloomberg. Users can also create their own political action groups, organize rallies and get-out-the-vote drives, and form candidate slates to support upcoming congressional elections.

In addition to Change.org’s political tools, Facebook members can use Change.org’s portal to raise money for over 1 million nonprofit organizations, organize volunteer events with friends, and raise awareness about social causes through their personal networks.

“Facebook is the fastest growing social network on the web and has the potential to become a true political force,” said Change.org founder and CEO, Ben Rattray.

Originally posted on July 3, 2007 @ 2:25 pm

StumbleUpon releases Facebook application

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stumble_facebook.jpgStumbleUpon, one of the most popular ways to discover new sites and videos on the Internet, today announced the release of a specially designed application for the Facebook Platform. The announcement came on the heels of hitting the recent milestone of two billion stumbles.

The StumbleUpon application for the Facebook Platform links users’ StumbleUpon and Facebook profiles. Now, users’ most recent “thumbs up” stumbles can be displayed right on their Facebook profile.

“The StumbleUpon application for the Facebook Platform blends discovery and social networking to create a perfect way for StumbleUpon and Facebook members to find and share new and interesting things on the Web,” said David Feller, vice president of marketing, StumbleUpon. “Finding the best sites on the Web just got easier for Facebook users.”

StumbleUpon has also unveiled a new feature within its newly redesigned user pages, called “What’s New.” Now, Stumblers can see the most recent discoveries within their network, facilitating sharing of the best sites within the StumbleUpon community.

Originally posted on June 28, 2007 @ 2:35 pm

LinkedIn to open their platform to developers?

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No confirmations yet as of this writing, but the idea of LinkedIn opening up their platform to developers is not far from happening.

With Facebook enabling developers to create applications for their network a month ago, LinkedIn is expected to follow suit. Yup, you got it right. Facebook and LinkedIn — an unlikely competition to watch out for. Vallywag has already commented on this, anticipating a battle between the two networking giants:

On the surface, the two couldn’t be any more different: Mark Zuckerberg’s social network has only recently expanded beyond college students; and Linked In is a tool for recruiters, job seekers, sales execs and other corporate drones. But Facebook’s interface is sufficiently clean, and efficient, that it’s attracting a new class of user, the professional.

True enough, the LinkedIn VS Facebook battle is looming in the horizon. (Or, has it already began?)

With about 11 million members to date, increasing with 180,000 new members each week, Dan Nye, LinkedIn’s CEO, is confident that LinkedIn will own the business networking. He said, “people will most likely have a social network for personal purposes, and another for professional and business-related connections. After the inevitable social net shakeout, Facebook and MySpace will remain standing and will compete to supply an outlet for personal self-expression and community. Meanwhile, LinkedIn will dominate the business of business networking — serving as a productivity tool used for professional reference checking, recruiting, and to get expert advice.”

But what if you can have both your personal and business contacts all in one platform? Interestingly, more and more professionals now are using Facebook to invite business contacts and create professional networks — a territory that supposedly has LinkedIn’s name on it. And with more possible developments being considered to upgrade Facebook’s platform, the logical thing for LinkedIn to do is to open up to new development strategies as well and catch up.

Two things that could happen in the next few weeks, or months: (1) LinkedIn to deploy itself as an application on Facebook; or (2) The two networks to take on the virtual battle. Let’s wait and see.

Originally posted on June 26, 2007 @ 5:20 am

Digg, Facebook, reach 20M unique visitors

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Compete, an online traffic metrics provider, reports that Digg and Facebook reach the 20 million unique visitors mark for the month of May.

Digg has managed to grow their volume of visitors to about 1400 percent in a span of a year, while Facebook’s site traffic has been steadily increasing since early May since new application development platforms were launched.

Compete’s Jay Meattle noted in the company blog that about four days after YouTube hit the 20M mark, Google made a move to acquire them for 1.65B worth of Google stock. “There is certainly something magical about reaching 20 million,” he added. This means that Digg and Facebook become prime acquisition targets in the web today.

Here are Digg and Facebook’s metrics for the month of May, compared with the top social networking site, MySpace, and the largest video sharing site in the web, YouTube.

Compete

Let’s see which company acquires what within the next few months.

Originally posted on June 21, 2007 @ 3:32 pm