The new "followers" feature on Google's Blogger, which turns the blogging service into a quasi-social network, may strike some as too little, too late — a me-too move following WordPress and Movable Type's adddition of social elements. But it didn't have to happen. Blogger had a full-fledged social network in the…
Metrics firm ComScore reports that 132 million unique visitors logged onto Facebook in June 2008, up from just 52 million in June 2007. 117 million worldwide users visited MySpace during June 2008. Its Facebook's first definitive traffic victory, from a source advertisers actually pay attention to, over MySpace. Way…
Give us more H-1B visas and we'll give you innovative products. That's the pitch Google exec Laszlo Bock made to Congress as he decried the H-1B visa cap. Projects like also-ran social network Orkut, which was created (or stolen, depending on who you ask) by H-1B hire Orkut Buyukkokten (pictured, right) represent a…
The conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is that MySpace, based in Los Angeles, is a tech nightmare, blaring songs through a user's speakers while crashing all the time. Skilled engineers are in short supply down south, so the website must be falling over all the time, right? Not so. Pingdom, a website-monitoring…
Felix Ximenes, Google's chief flack in brazil, yesterday gave the Brazilian government DVDs containing information on 3,261 allegedly child-lusting users of its social network Orkut. "With the information we have received, we will be able to strike a major blow against the pedophile network acting in the country,"…
Now we know why Bebo's so eager for more cash. It needs more servers. According to Pingdom, Bebo has already been down for 12 hours and 28 minutes so far this year. Check out the full chart to see how 13 other social networks have fared so far.
Google is the target of a trojan that could be more damaging than the worm that has affected literally dozens of Orkut users. This new trojan, however, hits Google where it hurts — its ever-swelling advertising revenues. It redirects Web ads from the AdSense program to a rival ad provider. Bitdefender, the Romanian…
A relatively harmless worm has rampaged through Google's social network, Orkut. You probably haven't noticed. That's because Orkut, while popular in Brazil and India, is an also-ran in the U.S. Hundreds of thousands of Orkut users saw their accounts overwhelmed by spam on their "scrapbooks," Orkut's equivalent of…
Coined by R. Stevens in his webcomic Diesel Sweeties, "social nerdwanking" means lording your social-network superiority over others, which is secretly the only reason you bother with Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Orkut, and every other social network. Except your legitimate if fruitless use of Adult FriendFinder.
Want to know why Orkut never caught on? Google's motto is "don't be evil," not "don't be socially awkward." The programmatic list of "turn ons" it asks users to check off include "sarcasm," "tattoos," "erotica," "skinny dipping," and "long hair." A more perfect glimpse at the Google id won't be found anywhere.…
According to a source, blog-software company Six Apart has joined as another partner for Google's OpenSocial platform. For those of you keeping count at home, don't bother. The list is surely to grow as word gets out. Social network Friendster, for example, wasn't asked to join the Google Gang. The pioneering social…
Half of Google's revenue now comes from outside the U.S. That's why the Wall Street Journal spilled so much ink running down the company's problems in Brazil over Orkut, the world's No. 5 website. You probably stopped using Orkut 3 and 1/2 years ago, after signing up to get into the launch party. My fellow Wags were…
The way News Corp. monarch Rupert Murdoch manipulates his many newspapers is enough to make Charles Foster Kane blush. It's one reason integrity-laden Wall Street Journal reporters lobbied against his takeover bid. But now it seems the mockingly self-righteous crew is starting to revel in their deal with the Aussie…
Alas, poor Marissa Mayer, the Google executive who used to date company cofounder Larry Page. Her long workdays, documented in endless magazine profiles, have taken a toll on her love life. She broke up with former boyfriend Dave Jeske, another Googler, more than a year ago. No dating on the horizon, though: Her …
Earlier, we scoffed at the idea that Facebook's traffic could have dropped in September. Compete.com — the poor man's ComScore, which makes its traffic data publicly available — just released September data that shows a similar drop. Maybe Facebook has peaked. More likely: since the kids returned to college, the…
Apparently, overseas, there are social networks other than Facebook and MySpace. Who knew? Read/WriteWeb mentions that social net Hi5 which tallies 35 million uniques per month according to ComScore, making it competitive with Facebook. And yet the name will draw blank stares at a Silicon Valley tech meetup. Like…
Google's Orkut social network draws more pageviews per day than its search engine, according to a post by videoblogger and conference hound Robert Scoble. Yeah, we're having trouble believing it, too. Anyone got the numbers?
Wondering what Adaptive Path cofounder Jeffrey Veen has been up to since Google hired him away last year? He's helping to revamp Orkut, Google's big-in-Brazil social network. [BusinessWeek]
After a 15-11 loss in an ultimate frisbee match against a team of scrappy Facebookers, disc-flinging Googlers swore revenge. But the social network left the search engine, again, unable to find victory, dishing out another 15-12 tromping earlier this week. "All that free food weighing them down," snipes a…
Some great reporting comes out of the once-dominant ZDNet news network. I just never happen to see it. Instead I see articles that scream "We don't do research." In the ZDNet article "How will Yahoo address social networking?" writer Larry Dignan suggests several sites that the company could buy, such as Facebook,…
