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Source:Mashable!

Remember when MySpace announced it had 100 million users, exactly two years ago? It was a big deal, but critics pointed out that many of those user accounts were inactive, and active users are what really counts.

Facebook, on the other hand, has always claimed they don’t sugarcoat their user numbers; they only count active accounts. If you choose to believe them, then today’s unofficial announcement - taken from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook status update - that Facebook has 100 million users is perhaps even more significant than MySpace’s two year old milestone.

Yes, MySpace got there first, but they had no platform and they had no clear vision - not when it comes to monetization, and not when it comes to organizing the chaos that is MySpace into something meaningful. Facebook hasn’t been the first or even the second social network, but they’ve managed to build this huge user base despite fierce competition; furthermore, their platform (although not without flaws) shows that they know where they want to take it from here.

So, which one would you rather have: A user base that has grown spontaneously, virally, and largely because of sheer novelty, or a user base which you’ve carefully groomed, which is active and using your service because they find it better than the competition? Sure, MySpace has its advantages, like its enormous music community, but I’d say that Facebook’s got the upper hand when it comes to what’s really important: Vision. Their 100 million users may not yet justify the $15 billion valuation they’ve been blessed (or cursed) with, but it’s definitely more than just another meaningless number.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:iLike Sees Exponential Growth with Facebook AppMore Money for Facebook: Hong Kong Investor Adds $40M+ to StakeINSANITY: Facebook App Sells to TripAdvisor for $3 MillionFacebook Gets Another $500 Million?Multiply Reaches 5 Million UsersFacebook’s Massive Growth: Hits 30 Million UsersFacebook Claims to Lead in People Search

Source:Mashable!

Animoto launched in beta last year as a way to create professional-looking videos based on a user’s set of uploaded images, as an alternative to other slide show creation sites or professional software packages used for editing purposes.

A year later, Animoto is emerging from beta, with a reported 4 million unique videos having been produced on its platform. Along with the official public launch of Animoto, there are a handful of new features, including the ability to select a cover image to accompany your video, improved handling of logos and panoramic images, as well as iPhone viewing capabilities.

In the past year, Animoto has received funding and gone on to do a good amount to further its service as a viable alternative to other options out there, making itself a platform for a number of different use cases and appealing to a variety of users. With a certain focus on the musical association for each image-turned-video, Animoto has extended its value to artists seeking channels through which their work can be distributed. To that end, Animoto has also released a number of distribution options, including YouTube uploads, so that users can easily send their finished Animoto content to other media-sharing sites across the Web.

Some of the more specific features Animoto has begun to offer are geared towards business users, and more recently, towards teachers, for uses in professional presentations as well as the classroom. While Animoto has a free service, the company is reporting that about 10% of its users are paying for premium services, and these premium services are even offered to teachers of grades K-12 for free, similar to Google’s initiatives for the education administrators that use Google Apps. Looking at Animoto’s past year of development, it would appear that the company is heavily targeting true professional uses for its service, but I also imagine that a directed course towards furthered integration with other social media sites is also in the works.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Animoto Officially Launches Video Mashup ToolAnimoto Mashups Promote Artists with New ProgramAnimoto: When Using Amazon Web Services Gets You FundingAnimoto: Turn your Images Into a Movie TrailerAnimoto Launches Video Solution for BusinessesDownload Animotos Directly to Your PCImage Animation App ‘Animoto’ Announces DVD Quality Video

Source:Mashable!

Multilingual social network XIHA Life publicly launches today, debuting its international approach to connecting users across the world. With neighborhoods in its online network, XIHA offers a unique way in which users can communicate with each other, selecting the languages in which they’d like to connect online. Initially designed as a way in which travelers and immigrants can experience a multilingual network while in other countries, XIHA has since grown to be more encompassing as a new way in which a social network can take on global expansion, with a focus on multicultural media-sharing.

This is exemplified with one of XIHA’s new features–its Music section. In this Music section, you’ll find all sorts of music from around the world, vastly expanding your access to the longtail of international music. It’s likely to eventually provide more variety than what you’ll find on more mainstream longtail music sites like Last.fm. So while XIHA music isn’t quite yet a streaming music recommendation service, it is building out a platform of sorts that enables users to share their disparate musical tastes in a global online environment.

In terms of promotion, XIHA is hoping that this approach will eventually provide the tools necessary to help global artists raise awareness and help spread the word about their own content, beyond their own respective countries. I’m interested in seeing how this format can become an alternative to other social network localization efforts, which don’t provide many ways in which different localized demographics can easily communicate with each other. Though still limiting to those that are rather fluent in more than one language, the global marketplace that XIHA can provide will be notable.

XIHA does intend to expand this marketplace beyond music, into other media types. And being based in Finland, XIHA is also looking to grow its user base in the U.S. over the next few months. I wondered at the marketing and advertising potential of such an international network, and how XIHA could offer targeted content and ads for its users. XIHA CEO Jani Penttiten informed me that XIHA doesn’t rely heavily on its ads placed throughout the site, but through premium content offered to end users. This also ties into XIHA’s marketing strategy, which is based on organic growth and rewards for referrals, so this will be used for its U.S. growth strategy as well.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Google Social Graph API Spotted in the Wild: Plaxo Public ProfilesPownce Launch Party Tonight - Pownce to Exit Private BetaTripSay Launches Publicly with Improved Search and InteractivityPownce To Launch Public APIMobile, Public Art Blogging, Wrapped Up in BigArtMobYouTube Germany LaunchesSocially Enabled Legal Documents?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 9:46 am and is filed under News, social networking, music, web 2.0, web, Web2.0 Startups, multilingual, xiha, XIHA Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.