del.icio.us tags 02.04.07

Social Networks

I came across Mashable yesterday and life is a little bit better than it was before. It's a blog dedicated to covering social networks, which are fascinating to me as they seem to grow more and more vertical. It's like porn. With social networks, you can get VERY VERY specific about the things that get you off. They have the potential to be huge assets in reaching niche audiences, but so many marketers have already crashed and burned trying to do it right.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable wrote about four social networks for the LGBT crowd -- two of which have not yet launched (Social Butter and Olivia.com). GLEE.com is a social and professional network from the folks behind MiGente and Black Planet. But the really cool one is Our Chart, which was started by three of the actresses from The L Word. Our Chart will prove once and for all that, yes, all lesbians know each other.

I mentioned Takkle yesterday, but there are a few other social networks vying for the love of sports fans. Mashable reports that Sports Illustrated/Time — which also owns Takkle — just bought Fan Nation for about $20 million, despite the fact that the site barely has any members (according to Mashable). There's also Sportsmates and iSporty, among others. It feels like 1997, folks.

I was excited to find MyDesignIn -- a social network for home remodelers -- but disappointed because, as it's in Beta, it's tough to know what it's really going to be able to do.

Research

Pew Center for the People and the Press released a report earlier this month, a "portrait" of "Generation Next," -- Americans between the ages of 18 and 25. More than the generation that preceded them, they identify as Democrats and have socially liberal views on interracial marriage (how 1975), homosexuality and immigration. On that last point, it's encouraging to know -- that in an era of Lou Dobbs and Minutemen Project -- more young people than ever before think that the growing number of immigrants is a positive for the country. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that many of them, or their parents, are immigrants themselves.

Pew Internet & American Life Project conducted a survey in December to assess how pervasive tagging had become among Internet users: 28 percent have and 7 percent do so on a daily basis.

Here are some additional details:

• women and men are just as likely to be taggers
• most taggers are under the age of 40
• taggers are more likely to have a broadband connection than dial up
• people of color are more likely than whites to tag
• higher education and higher income increase the likelihood of tagging as well

A New Tool

We're always looking for more effective ways to measure the influence of a web site or blog. It's time consuming and, more often than not, results -- even those generated by the same search tool -- are inconsistent. ToolURL at least makes things easier by bringing everything together in one place: Bloglines, Technorati, del.icio.us, Alexa, Ultrends and more.

You're Being Watched

dotherightthing.com is Digg for folks -- like me -- who are invested in corporate social responsibility. It has great potential, but as with all social media, it depends on the quantity and the quality of the participants. I'll be watching.