There is a new wave of social networking in China. It’s a phenomenon called tuangou, or team buying, where a group of shoppers joined together through social networks such as online BBS (bulletin board systems), chat rooms and other web forums to purchase the product they are interested. Once they gathered around 40 or more bargain hunters, they would appoint a captain to approach the retailers for an in-store haggling session. This may sound crazy here in US, but haggling is actually very popular in China.
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One month after launching their MySpace Music streaming service, the company has announced a new deal that will double the amount of indie music available through the service.
The deal, with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), will add more than 1 million tracks from over 3000 indie labels to MySpace Music.
IODA founder and Chief Executive Kevin Arnold added that the songs will be added to the service in December.
MySpace music currently has several million tracks available to its 120 million users from the Big 4 labels as well as independent music distributor, The Orchard, whose catalog is over 1.3 million tracks.
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Where did everybody go? Recent Nielsen Online statistics reveal that the social-networking congregating online may not be hanging out where you think they are.
Nielsen’s September numbers for thirteen sites with a significant social-networking aspect provide stirring testimony to the ability of many of us to do anything but work on our computers — and, obliquely, a look at how the hype still outstrips reality in many cases.
The year 2008’s most popular social-networking site was also 2007’s — that would be MySpace, boasting a unique-audience-members count of 59,352,000 (sampling-derived numbers provided to Techachino were rounded to the nearest thousand in the customary fashion). MySpace users also spend the most time per person per session on the site, at 1:47:55.
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It seems like Twitter is always acknowledging its shortcomings and apologizing for them. Some might take this as a weakness, but I tend to look at it admirably. Not many companies would be so straightforward when it comes to taking responsibility for their missteps. Twitter is all about communication though, so it only makes sense that when they’re having problems, they talk about them openly.
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Whether you love the device or hate it, stories about the iPhone are going to be hard to escape for a few weeks. Google and Facebook appear to fall into that first category, and have added to the hubbub by releasing iPhone-specific applications.
iPhones are able to browse the Web, of course, so at first glance, these apps look a little bit redundant. Their existence speaks to the popularity of the iPhone, though, along with corporate desires to please the device’s user base. And the apps do offer a few new tricks.
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Though many were disappointed yesterday in Representative John Culberson’s (R-TX) partisan scapegoating via Twitter, he did sort of fall backwards over an important issue. The issue wasn’t that Democrats were seeking to abridge Congressional freedom of speech as it related to Web 2.0 applications, but that Congressional freedom of speech had already been abridged via previously established draconian gag rules.
Culberson’s outburst had good timing though. That same day (yesterday), The Sunlight Foundation registered LetOurCongressTweet.org. They launched a Twitter petition immediately.
How’s that for lightening-fast activism?
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Google yesterday launched Lively — its own version of the 3D, Avatar-based virtual world — as an embeddable gadget. But social data barriers remain between Google and Facebook, which is granted separate but equal access to Lively rooms.
A Lively browser plug-in must first be downloaded for either Internet Explorer or Firefox, and Windows XP or Vista is required. Once running, the service asks for a Google ID or Gmail username and password to begin. From there, the user can create his own avatars and Lively Rooms (think of them as more of a series of graphically-enhanced chat windows than a cohesive metaverse.) which can then be embedded in other sites, such as Facebook.
However, due to current disagreements between Google and Facebook regarding privacy and the sharing of social data, a large kink remains apparent in Lively.
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A cynical person (and/or someone who’s tired of zombies and sheep) might argue that Facebook should ban all applications. The social network hasn’t gone that far, but for the sake of users’ privacy, it has at least shown an encouraging willingness to restrict the things.
First Top Friends disappeared, and Social Me suffered the same fate. Now there are reports that some of Super Wall’s features have been suspended, and as a result, the app’s number of daily active users decreased by about 75 percent.
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Night of mayhem cancelled
A beach party organized on Facebook that was expected to attract as many as 10,000 revelers has been canceled after police warned that it was illegal.
More than 7,000 people had confirmed on the social networking site that they would attend the party billed as “a night of mayhem,” in the coastal town of Torbay, England.
An entry on Facebook notifies would be partygoers of the change in plans. “Due to an unexpected high number of people registered to attend this event a license is required for it to go ahead legally and safely. An application for such a license is a lengthy process and cannot be completed within the given time constraints.”
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Senior Facebook executive Matt Cohler will be leaving the social networking company to join Benchmark Capital this fall as a general partner, the venture capital firm announced today.
Cohler, 31 joined Facebook in early 2005 and was one of the first five people hired by the company’s founders. He currently is the vice president of product management at Facebook.
Cohler will still have ties with Facebook, acting as a special advisor to Facebook’s founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and to its senior management team.
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