New SNS'es have a hard time finding an audience

InSites, a Ghent based internet consulting agency found that about 70% of Belgian surfers are on social network sites (which is in line with the global average of 72%).
What is remarkable is that most surfers have membership to two or more online communities. Most of those communities are for personal use. Only 16% of the Belgian surfers is member of a professional network like LinkedIn.
Most users visit their profile twice a day. Professional profiles like LinkedIn are only visited 9 times a month on average.
InSites claims that new SNS'es will find it more and more difficult to penetrate the market and find their own niche. Most surfers are happy with today's situation and do not want to change their community site or add one to their 'portfolio'. Steven Van Belleghem, managing partner of InSites: "There is a certain stability in the SNS market".

Source: T-zine

A great business plan: the road to success?

One of the stress inducing school assignments I was talking about earlier is to write a business plan for our internet start-up. The books and articles about the topic are countless and the number of business-plan contests is increasing every year. Even entire courses are devoted to writing a business plan. I started to think that the only thing standing between our group and success are some nice color charts, a financial projection and a nice lay-out. But then I wondered: “can we really ‘plan’ our business? Is it even possible to say that an investor will have a ROI of 23% within 2 years or do we just mean "If everything that could go right does go right, you might get your money back"? I guess what I’m saying is that avoiding risks is impossible and not everything can be laid out in a plan. However in the absence of crystal ball, a business plan consisting of correct and honest information is indeed a good start to success.

Web 2.0: Down the rabbit hole?

The hot internet phenomenon of the moment seems to be Chatroulette, a brand new one-on-one service for text-, webcam- and microphone-based chat around the world. After hitting the “start” button on the website, your webcam is activated immediately and before you know it you’re staring into the eyes of a stranger. When you hit “next” you are presented with a new chatting partner. It feels like speed-dating to the max. What does this fad tell about us though? Have we fully embraced the general spirit of internet randomness? Why don’t we feel inhibited to scroll through others’ lives like it’s the most normal thing in the world? Is this just one of many platforms leading the way for the social domination of hyper dynamic Me The Media mass communication? The individualization of the web and ever-growing need for self-expression on the internet definitely offers food for thought and discussion. Nothing seems to shock us anymore, terms like “personal” and “private” don’t mean the same thing they used to do and we are assuming that life is happening here, online. Can everybody deal with the virtualization of life? After my own Chatroulette deflowering I must say that I’m far from ready to put myself out there like that. Guess I’ll just stick to Facebook for now.

Sources:

http://mashable.com/2010/03/16/chatroulette-vs-hot-or-not/

http://www.methemedia.com/

http://www.chatroulette.com/

Running to reduce stress!

Last night I was thinking back of my first years at university: it seems my life wasn’t so stressful back then. Things were much easier. No team work, no new deadlines in my diary every week, the only calendar I had to worry about was my social calendar. Now, I have to prioritize and make to-do lists: school, projects, blogs, team meetings…. Making the transition from being a student to being a young professional isn’t that easy apparently. The trick to reduce the stress level is to find an activity that calms you, for some of us that’s dancing to a favorite song, for others it’s reading a good book, for me it’s jogging. I have set myself a new goal. I’m going to run the 10km of Ghent. In 10 weeks I’ll run 10km in 1 hour. Who’s with me?

The internet in figures

The internet is a vast country. 247 billion e-mails per day, 126 million active bloggers, 27 million tweets per day. 30.000 servers to store your idiotic Facebook Fan Pages.
And that's 2009. 2010 is bound to break all those records!

The American web agency Jess3 collected different statistics into The State Of The Internet.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

Source: Focus Knack

BBDO Argentina, Sake and Nike+ tweet while running 10k

Responding of the current trend – set by Nike+ – of massive running events, BBDO Argentina and Sake invited 5 Argentinean celebrities, who would be running The human race 10k, to blog on their experience – live!

Nike+ Human Race 10K LIVE from the INSIDE from BBDO argentina on Vimeo.

They were wearing an iPhone, strapped to their arms and an earphone. By hitting a button they were able to share their thoughts orally, while running the race. These voice messages were turned into text messages which were published at thehumanrace.com.ar/envivo, in their Twitter accounts and various other websites.

To prove that the satnav-hype has still not yet reached its peak, the runners positions and points of messages were shown on a Google Maps map. The fanemka-team believes that within a few years everyone will constantly have a personal satnav with them in their smartphones, like digital cameras are nowadays even found in the cheapest cell phones.

Source: Vimeo

Switch to a Pitch for Free Publicity!

Promoting a new and innovative SNS surely sounds expensive. However, it can be extremely cheap and easy if you are willing to invest time in making yourself and your business visible on online PR networks. PitchRate.com is an online service that offers free publicity and connects journalists with experts and publicists for free media coverage. You can join the site for free and pitch yourself to journalists when you think you’re right for an incoming request or a source needed by a journalist. When you make the pitch, all of your contact info will automatically be sent as well. After that, all you have to do is wait to be contacted by the journalists who made the request for an interview and free publicity to promote yourself and your online business! Want to learn more? Visit http://www.pitchrate.com/.

Sources:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-8114-Internet-Business-Examiner~y2009m7d28-Internet-Business-101--How-to-get-free-online-publicity
http://www.pitchrate.com/