Index of social networking

SplashCast, a startup that lets you create your own broadcasting channel, has announced that it has successfully secured $4M in Series A funding.

While the company once hyped the idea of injecting social networking into podcasting, now its focus is “a new form of online marketing called social advertisements.” According to the compan, their social advertisements consistently receive click-through-rates 75 times higher than typical banner advertisements used on MySpace, Facebook, and other social network sites.

“It’s clear that Internet sites such as MySpace and Facebook are the new TVs for today’s young consumers and that SplashCast is far and away the best tool out there for reaching this audience,” said Bayliss. 

SplashCasts are like multi-channel TV screens that can be placed on an individual’s social network profile page. Brands and media companies can use SplashCast to distribute videos, games, pictures, and other digital content. You can share SplashCasts so that others can embed them in their MySpace or Facebook pages.

Matt Mullenweg, the guy behind Wordpress, announced today that he’s hired someone to develop social networking features for Wordpress:

Some of you may remember when I wrote about Chickspeak, a WordPress MU-based social network. Andy Peatling, the fellow behind it, later decided to recreate the work he had done as an Open Source effort he called BuddyPress. And it was good.

Today I’m happy to announce that Andy has joined Automattic full-time and we’ll be taking the BuddyPress project under our wing. We will grow it and support it the same way we support WordPress, MU, bbPress, Akismet, and more.

It’s clear that the future is social. Connections are key. WordPress MU is a platform which has shown itself to be able to operate at Internet-scale and with BuddyPress we can make it friendlier. Someday, perhaps, the world will have a truly Free and Open Source alternative to the walled gardens and open-only-in-API platforms that currently dominate our social landscape.

We wrote about BuddyPress in December, but the project had been mothballed since then, because of lack of time on Peatling’s part. This should give Peatling the time and the resources to develop the project.

What’s this mean for Wordpress users? A year from now, you should have the option to have your site not just be a blog or a podcast, but an extensible social network, based on open standards.

When we talked with the guys from Ask A Ninja recently, they were excited about adding a third-party social network to their site. BuddyPress should eventually make it just as easy for indie podcasters and bloggers to create custom, self-hosted social networks.

Ed Roberts (photo, right), KC Weather Podcast, and music podcast, Looking Out The Window, led a PodCamp Midwest session called “Join the Conversation: (Ed Roberts is not the guy who invented the Altair computer, nor the guy who founded the disability movement and caused wheelchair-accessible parking spaces to be made availalbe)

The New Media Triangle (barriers to entry for media) Production/Distribution/Marketing. We’re breaking down those barriers - production via our inexpensive computers. Distribution: we have the Internet. Marketing: people can do word of mouth promotion.

Engaging people is what it’s all about: (cool video “Free Hugs” guy)

Lessons about conversation: People have ben reluctant to step out and communicate, folks don’t even know their close neighbors. But, once one person begins to engage others, more people feel less hesitant to join in. People become willing to champion your conversation, your agenda.

Getting involved in the conversation has benefits beyond just your own issue or program.

“Google is your friend” - do ego-surfing to see where people are talking about you (Google yourself). Find conversations already happening about your topic. Join in. Google Alerts will come and bring those mentions and conversations to you. Google Analytics can show you statistics for traffic and who is visiting your website.

“Social Media is your friend” Use Twitter to engage people in conversation- search Twitter, and other social networking, social media sites, to find other people with similar interests, and engage with them.

“RSS is your friend ” - Technorati, a blog aggregator, can track changes in feeds around the world, and you can subscribe to that search, and feed it into your feed reader. Tweetscan.com can also do this. EveryZing.com used to be called PodZinger and searches audio files which it has indexed. (demonstrated using a search of “Ed Roberts” - search yielded his last 2 weather podcasts, and a mention on CC Chapman’s Accident Hash. Very cool.).

So many ways to find where and how people are talking on the Internet. But we need to be cognizant of living in the fishbowl, only talking to other people in your little insular circle of friends. Be sure to look at communities outside your online bubble, outside your echo chamber.

Include listeners’ comments and voicemails *in* your show, and that encourages people to interact with the show, and with you, contributing ideas and content.

Seen at Twitter this morning:

Maybe a bit of an understatement?

VideoEgg, a video advertising network for online communities, today announced three new partnerships to expand its distribution of invitation-based video advertising. VideoEgg’s partnership with imeem, Metacafe, and Buzznet increases the ad network’s reach by more than 50 million unique users.“These sites are the new MTV’s,” said Matt Sanchez, CEO of VideoEgg. “Brands need to find innovative ways to get video in front of young consumers who are not sitting in front of the television. imeem, Metacafe and Buzznet are influential media brands with great momentum, and we are delighted to be partnering with them to deliver rich media advertising to their users in a respectful manner.”

Anne Zelenka at GigaOm has an interesting take on the idea of using WordPress as a social networking platform, looking at DiSo, Chris Messina’s project to build a social networking platform based on WordPress:

“In contrast to social networking, blogging offers a person-centric way for individuals to come online. A social network like Facebook gives you your own place online, but it’s not really your own place. As Copyblogger Brian Clark recently said in a blog post, “For me, there’s really no appeal in spending a lot of time creating ‘user-generated’ content via a social networking application. That’s like remodeling the kitchen in a house you rent.”

Clark was responding to an ongoing conversation launched by blogger and cartoonist Hugh MacLeod, who proposed that blogging is far more important to him than social networking. Bloggers including Stowe Boyd and Darren Rowse seconded the idea. This growing disenchantment with social networking and return to blogging suggests that in the future we could see a migration, at least among tech bloggers, towards more distributed social networking — along the lines of what Messina envisions.”

In addition to Messina’s project, another WordPress social network project to watch is Andy Peatling’s BuddyPress. The goal for BuddyPress is to completely transform a vanilla installation of Wordpress MU into a fully functional social network platform.

The idea of opening up social networking so that anyone can build a social network makes sense. Web publishing has evolved from being something only big organizations could do to something that everyone can do. Audio and video publishing are doing the same thing, evolving into things that anyone can do. It looks like building social networks will follow this path, too.

Podbean, which describes itself as a podcast social subscribing site, has introduced an embeddable multimedia podcast player that can be used to put your podcast on Facebook, MySpace and blogs.

The free player supports both videos and audios. It’s designed so that you can embed the player once, and Podbean updates the player content whenever you create, modify or delete podcast episodes.

Australian vocalist Kylie Minogue appears to be the first mega-diva to launch her own social networking site.

KylieKonnect.com lets fans blog, upload images and video and interact with other users. By letting fans blog and post videos, the site has the potential to be the locus of attention for Kylie fans.

Currently the site is short on content, a bit of a ghost town, and, yes, Kylie is our only friend. But it’s interesting to see a global pop star experimenting with new media.

Along with groups like Radiohead and Madonna leaving their traditional labels behind, Minogue’s move is part of a growing trend towards musicians interacting with their audiences in new ways, especially through the Internet.
The site’s designers, New Visions Mobile, believe it is more mobile and flexible than social network sites like MySpace and Facebook, already important marketing tools for pop stars.

“The whole thing is set up so that Kylie can update her blog and have a closer connection with fans,” said Julia McNally, business development director at New Visions Mobile.

Kylie introduces her new site below.

Watch Now:

 Kylie Minogue Makes Bunny Ears [0:48m]: Play Now | Download

PoliceOne.com today announced that it has launched BLUtube, the first online video community for police officers and departments nationwide. The site is like YouTube for police.

BLUtube offers members of the law enforcement community a secure environment in which to view and upload videos. BLUtube includes law enforcement-only sections with video tips, roll call training segments and in-car videos.

BLUtube also includes a variety of community features, including the ability to create video playlists, subscribe to other members’ content, and rate or comment on videos. BLUtube’s featured topics cover a wide range of law enforcement subjects, from training clips and product demonstrations to dashcam videos.

KickApps Corporation, a hosted social media platform, today announced a service for sharing videos for use with iPhones. Videos uploaded to KickApps-powered social media sites can be viewed on the iPhone using the device’s Safari web browser.

With today’s announcement, KickApps is the first social media platform to support web video viewing and sharing on the iPhone. You can see an example of a KickApps site optimized for the iPhone at KickFlix.net.