Zivity, a softcore adult social network, and Hi5, your standard run-of-the-mill social network, have both announced job cuts this week.

Zivity is poised to cut a full third of its staff.  They’ve tried to spin it as a positive, presenting it as a preventative measure put in place to ensure long-term profitability.  But still.  No matter how you slice it, when you’re firing one out of every three people that works for you, no es bueno.

Hi5, which - depending on which metric you’re looking at - ranks anywhere from the world’s third largest to sixth largest social network, is cutting 15 percent of its employees.

*sigh*

They’re not the first cuts the tech industry has seen this recession, and they won’t be the last. :/

Popularity: 6% [?]

Share This

One of the best uses of social networks - aside from getting back in touch with people you haven’t seen since third grade, obviously - is to garner exposure for yourself, your brand, or your website.

There are all kinds of ways and all kinds of networks that you can utilize for this purpose.

For instance - you can have a presence on straightforward social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook.  These sites allow you to have profiles and to communicate with friends and fans through a variety of methods, including inviting people to be on your friends list, messaging, public profile commenting, and blogs and bulletins.

In addition to straight social networking sites, there are themed social networking sites.  Business-themed sites include LinkedIn and Gather.  Music-themed sites include Virb and MOG.  There are themed social networks for whatever your passion might be!

Next, try media sharing social networks.  Video sharing sites don’t end with YouTube, there are many others.  Some, like Revver and Metacafe, will pay you for your efforts.  Others, like Current TV and Vimeo, have a very strong identity and community that you can participate it.  Photo sharing sites like Flickr can be great for propagating your visual images across the web and throughout the social aspect of the site itself, as well.

Microblogging sites like Twitter and Tumblr are great for keeping your admirers filled in with small, frequent updates, and for keeping up with them, as well.

Lastly, there is the mother of all types of social networks - forums. :)  Yes, I know no one thinks of them as social networks, but they were the inception of the internet (bbs) and they were the original way that people created an online persona and interacted with others.  Don’t count them out as being “too web 1.0.”

The one thing that is of paramount importance is that you participate in each site only after having clicked around, read, absorbed, and gotten a good idea of what the atmosphere is like in each place.  You don’t want to be considered spammy in any way, and each site will have its own culture and way of doing things, and set of behaviors that are considered fine or faux paus.  Get to know them!

If you participate in each type of site with enthusiasm, energy, consideration, and a sincere desire to give more than you get, you will come away with invaluable exposure for yourself, your brand or your website.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Share This

For a lot of people, building themselves as a brand includes expanding their presence across the web, among many and varies social networking, media, and sharing sites. However, learning about these sites, going to them, finding out if your preferred username is available, and registering can be time consuming.

Don’t get too excited, it still is.

But, with the aid of UsernameCheck.com, combined with a tool by Jeffrey Palm, it’s less so.

With UsernameCheck, you enter your desired username in the top box, and it runs a screen on 63 different websites to tell you if it’s available -

Then, you use Jeffrey’s tool to turn all of the “available” links to sign-up links that go directly to registration pages -

Like I said, still time consuming, but significantly less so!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Share This

So, embedding Kina’s Digg song last week got me thinking about other songs I’ve heard that are about websites.

Not to brag or anything, but I’m KIND of the Queen of the Theme mixtape. For instance, I have managed to collect 27 songs that are all either called “Melanie” or feature a major character named “Melanie” - I call that one “Narcissism.” My masterpiece to date, though, is “Rockin’ While Stalkin’” - songs about stalking or being stalked.

This mix I’ve put together here, I have to say, is pretty cool and I’m kinda proud of it, even though it only features 6 songs.

Enjoy!

Kina Grannis - Gotta Digg Here’s the song that gave me the idea in the first place.

Alana Taylor - The Twitter Song It talks about Twitter AND Facebook, and even mentions Mahalo Daily Triple Threat

IM Love - Raining Jane This song doesn’t talk about a specific website, but…how can you not include Raning Jane? IMPOSSIBLE! God, I hope you’re not my Dad. That’s all I’m sayin’.

The Myspace Song - Good Clean Fun They know how Emo kids feel.

I’m a Warrior - Steven Wagenheim Only song on the list dedicated to an IM forum. Come on eWealthers - catch up! Nebula/Jamie? Nothing?

YouTube (A Love Song) - David Choi A lot of people claim they see a little smile at the end. I don’t.

Ebay - Weird Al Yankovic (contributed by xmx)

Facebook Anthem - LLP81 (I don’t think this is a band, just people that make funny videos, but it’s DAMN funny! ) (contributed by Ian Wilcox)

Coming Soon, hopefully, will be The Internet Killed Bookmobile by ColinSick.

Did I Forget Any? Leave Them In The Comments, I’ll Amend the List!

Popularity: 13% [?]

Share This

Check out these really cool videos from Jeff Johnson - he talks about Social Media. One of my favorite topics!

This is a seminar presentation from the 2008 Secret Society of Traffic and Conversion Seminar, presented in 18 parts. It’s worth it.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Share This

My myspace profile has reappeared as mysteriously as it disappeared.

GO FIGURE!

Whatever, I’m just glad it’s back.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Share This

Not sure what happened, but Myspace just deleted a bunch of accounts - including mine.

I got a message earlier today saying I’d been phished (which I am VERY sure I hadn’t, I’m uber-careful!) and then about an hour ago, it’s gone.

I can still log in but I get a ton of error messages and I can’t do anything.  Also, when I go to my account’s public profile, it says “invalid ID”. I noticed that a lot of musicians’ accounts are gone, too - even musicians on the Myspace Top Artists List. Maybe they were targeting big profiles? :/

*sigh*

Very depressing.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Share This

This isn’t really cutting edge current news, as it happened last week, but I thought that it was an interesting commentary to point out about social networking.

For you marketers out there who poo-poo utilizing social networking or Web 2.0 sites as a viable traffic/visibility strategy, consider that -

- Newscorp bought Myspace for $585 million (amid industry speculation that the number was too low!)
- Google bought YouTube for 1.6 billion
- Now Microsoft has offered Facebook 6 billion…and they’ve turned it down!

Hmmmmm…think these big corporations might be seeing value where you’re not?

*melanie

Popularity: 18% [?]

Share This

So, I’ve started a myspace profile for InternetMarketingChick.com - and I must say, I am having a BLAST!

I have already messaged with some very cool people and gotten some great feedback on the site (Hi, Richard! ).

The URL is http://www.myspace.com/InternetMarketingChick.

Add me as a friend, why don’tcha?

*melanie

Popularity: 11% [?]

Share This

The latest widget that Myspace has added to the user backend is a fun little thing called “Status and Mood.”

It allows a user to choose from a drop-down menu of pre-filled in “Status” text or fill in their own. You then get to choose a “Mood” and accompanying Smilie.

It populates just above your Mailbox Notifications, as you can see in this screenshot of my admin panel, so it will be getting maximum exposure!

Here’s where it really gets interesting, though…and useful for us marketers! See that text that says, “View my Friends Status Updates”?

Here’s what you see when you click that:

It’s a list, complete with profile icons, of all your Status Updates of all of your friends. This is a great way to remind people that you are on their friends lists! Particularly now that bulletins are largely ignored by most users, this has the potential to be a REALLY useful tool.

Another benefit is that because you can’t put a link or a long message that would be conducive to spamming, these will likely be more genuinely used by true members of the site who are interested in keeping up with their friends list, therefore much more likely to be taken seriously by users.

This doesn’t, however, mean that you can’t use it to build buzz or generate traffic back to your page from your friends list. Myspace populates the “{Your Username} is” part and you fill in the rest.

So how about messages like: Melanie is…

- excited about her latest blog post!
- missing her friends…leave me a comment, guys!
- stoked because she just put a new video on her page!

The possibilities abound! I love this tool because it’s so “Networking Friendly” and so “Spamming UN-friendly.” Myspace has HUGE profit potential when you use it for what it’s intended for - to network - and this is a great tool.

Lastly, the myspace crowd is fickle and likely will be bored with this in a couple of months…if I were you, I’d jump on this widget while it’s the hot new thing!

*melanie

Popularity: 14% [?]

Share This