As promising as virtual goods utilized by Facebook games have looked to be this past year, there has been a wave of controversy rising over its potential expense. As relationships with virtual goods companies and social games are reportedly yielding boatloads of revenue, consumers, privacy advocates and pundits are taking notice. This past week has proven particularly damaging for several companies participating in virtual goods, as scams are revealed and less than stellar business practices are uncovered or alleged with many of the popular social games on Facebook (i.e. FarmVille, Restaurant City, Mafia Wars, etc.). Read more »

The internet is an incredibly powerful tool for sharing information, communicating, and learning, but it’s also an excellent resource that identity thieves use to obtain your personal information. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States and nowadays most people don’t give a second thought to posting their full name, address, and phone number on popular social networks like Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. Read more »

The world is buzzing with Twittermania these days and if you truly understand what Twitter is really about you’re not surprised by all the attention it’s getting. If you don’t understand what Twittering is or you think Twitter is just another stupid time wasting social network, I challenge you to continue reading as I am sure you will not feel the same way about it afterward. I can assure you that Twitter is not a fad or a gimmick and it’s not just the newest breed of social networks. Twitter is a powerful tool that can be used to do many things and it is unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Read more »

In case you haven’t heard, John Mayer was dumped by Jennifer Anniston because he Twitters too much and president Obama has returned to the Twittersphere. These are just a few of the many examples of how the world is becoming so infatuated with the tech juggernaut known as Twitter. Many others including well known politicians, musicians, actors, athletes, bloggers, major news sources, and television personalities are embracing Twitter to effectively connect with their fans. Read more »

Lately TechCrunch has been following the effects of the economic crisis on the technology sector quite closely.  Michael Arrington and his crew have been providing us with updates of the mounting numbers of tech layoffs and failing tech companies for the past month or so.  Just the other day Erick Schonfeld wrote that technology related layoffs had surged past 100,000. Read more »

According to circulating rumors, MyYearbook is in the process of raising a huge round of funding. If you read my recent post comparing the demographical data of the top social networking sites, this should not surprise you. Sure MyYearbook is experiencing large growth but my bet is that’s not the primary reason why investors may have such confidence in it. The Compete graph below provides us with some great insight to this and why MyYearbook pwns Facebook and MySpace Read more »

Using Quantcast analytics from last month (April 2008), I recently compiled data on the most popular social networking sites to determine which ones have the most educated and most wealthy user base. Social networking sites included in the analysis were largely based on the Compete list of top social networks, the total U.S. estimated monthly uniques for the month of April (as reported by Quantcast), and author interest.

No surprises here with MySpace and Facebook at the top. It is interesting to note that Facebook’s Read more »