With growing influence of Social Media and increasing power drift towards the community side, plethora of tech companies are trying hard to leverage the ‘Social’ trait of internet consumers and building a sustainable business out of it.

Facebook is the biggest example among other internet companies. It’s a single product company(Social networking website) that’s getting valued at around $40Bn in private investment rounds and secondary markets. And guess what, they’re largely monopolistic in Social networking arena.

Twitter and Zynga are other big examples of the same ongoing trend. People love getting social online. Whether it’s about consuming news stuff, communicating with celebs or playing & sharing game scores with friends, the basic idea is to build a web product that gets people involved and then their friends, then friends of their friends and so on.

If the ‘social’ element is carefully taken care of, Internet masses are likely to take that web service on a viral ride. Even massive sized product/technology obsessed companies such as Google are trying mighty hard to get their footsteps right and produce a lovable social product for end consumers.

After analyzing startup requests that we tend to receive regularly, there has been a noticable shift of focus among entrepreneurs about their product appeal and nature of their business. ‘Getting Social’ is increasingly becoming the key factor for achieving success on Internet. Such a trend has also given rise to slew of web services that primarily use Facebook & Twitter APIs and build products around the core service.

And surprisingly, companies like Zynga have actually made huge profits(over hundreds of millions) by simply being a gaming application provider on Facebook and leveraging the untapped social power.

Leaving successful social web products aside, there are smaller web companies such as Identi.ca and SocialText which are using Micro-blogging as their way of engaging people and growing their product usage.

Then there are websites such as Chatroulette which gained instant popularity among Internet masses for tapping the ‘social’ factor with a different approach altogether. Anonymous video chats with random people attracted thousands of folks across the world to start conversing with random people and end up making new friendships.

Chat oriented websites such as qmpeople aren’t so great at innovating radical ways of social interaction but they have managed to attract and maintain user attention by offering a lot of interactivity features(chat, groups, photo/video sharing, sms, games, etc) and providing language specific versions for various popular languages(French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian etc) apart from English.

Concluding the whole ‘Social’ thing, the bottom line is that Social Interaction, either among known or unknown people, is a crowd pleaser and is sure to attract lots of entrepreneurs in the years to come.

With a number of widgets available for the website owner to use (such as ‘Member widget’, ‘Comment widget’ and so on), the website administrator is given all the rights to moderate his or her growing community. With ‘Google Friend Connect’ enabled, any website can very well flourish its own targeted community and explore it further.

And with the latest addition from Google called ‘Comments Translation’ feature, there are no more troubles in reading comments written in other languages than English in the ‘Comment Widget’ section of your GFC enabled website or blog.

Google has used machine translation for providing ‘Comment Translation’ but it does its job well in helping users interpret the jist of the comment left in any native language.

More updates from Google include Google Friend Connect Plugins for WordPress( Guide to Install it, Install the Plugin) , Drupal( Guide to Install it, Install the Plugin), PhpBB( Guide to Install it, Install the Plugin).

But the actual benefits of being a ‘Google Friend Connect Enabled’ website aren’t clear to most of the folks till now.

Here are the 7 benefits of being a GFC enabled website, which are enough to convince site owners, to atleast try out the service. 

1. ‘Google Friend Connect’ helps building a community around your website/blog
2. ‘Google Friend Connect’ brings a ‘Social’ touch to your website or blog
3. More website members will fetch you more relevant contacts
4. If ‘Comment Widget’ is enabled by the site owner, it gives an easier way for people to leave feedback about your website, in multiple languages.
5. It gives you all the moderation capabilities within your community.
6. ‘Google Friend Connect’ is extremely easy to install and make it LIVE
7. It’s quite easy for any user to become your site’s member. With so many options(Gmail,AIM,OpenID,Yahoo) available to join any site, it takes seconds for any interested visitor to become your site’s member. 

For many site owners, the above reasons might not appear lucrative enough but for engaging your audiences and giving them a community-like experience, ‘Google Friend Connect’ is possibly the best service one can have.

This post has been guest authored by Sudhindra Rao,a Digital Communications Professional who’s also an ardent Social Media freak.He blogs here and tweets here.Click here to know more about him.

AskOxford defines Flock as a noun meaning “a large number or crowd”. And this is the most appropriate name for a new social browser “Flock”.

Flock is an open source browser and would be more useful to bloggers and people involved in social networks or people who are web 2.0 savvy. Flock is based upon open source code from Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

Flock is equipped with lots of social networking tools such as integrated blogging, flicker and Youtube support, bookmark syncing with del.icio.us, inbuilt feed reader, can add social accounts like facebook, twitter etc

Flock Features

• It has built-in tabs  whereby you can add, see, contact, and interact with your social networking friends in Facebook, Digg, Youtube, Pownce, Twitter, Flickr
• You can have search through Google, Yahoo. MSN, Ask, Wikipedia, ebay, Technorati, Digg, Facebook, wink,people
• It has a in-built Photo uploader, Blog editor, web mail & Web clipboard
• It has a in-built feed reader, and a media bar, which instantly finds pictures, videos from Digg, Photobucket, Flickr, Facebook, Youtube, Picasa and more.

Look n Feel

Flock gives a great user experience and it looks like a beautified Firefox. The buttons, menus are neatly placed, with a good color combination and useful icons.

Other than the usual buttons,some new ones are:

Favorite : Single click to add in browser, Double click to add to Del.icio.us

RSS : To show the feeds available in the entered URL

Mail : To mail the entered URL

Digg : To dig the entered URL

Search: Search through Google, Yahoo, Ask, Amazon, MSN, Digg etc

My World

My world button takes care of your favorite feeds, favorite websites, friend’s activity (friends from your social network) & favorite media. You can have a look at once on all the four.

People Sidebar

People sidebar is a bar giving you option to login to your social networks such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Plurk, Digg etc. Your friend are displayed as a list, with their recent activity and you can message them by just dragging dropping any image video to their names. and it gets posted to their profile.

Media Mini Bar

Using Flock’s Media Bar, quickly preview online videos and photos, subscribe to video feeds, keep up to date on your friends’ picture postings, search media files, send videos to friends with one click etc.

You can share media through the following sites: Youtube, Flickr, Digg, Facebook, Photobucket etc. With each sharing site again divided in to groups such as technology, Business, News, Lifestyle etc….

Blog Editor

An inbuilt blog editor is provided where you can copy text, pictures and videos from anywhere on the web and instantly post them into Flock’s Blog Editor or directly into blog. You can also monitor, manage and post to different blogs.

When mouse is hovered over any image/video in any website, a small button appears, by clicking which u can submit the image/video to Blog or email it.

Webmail

Flock also has an integrated web mail feature in which Flock plugs into several Web mail services to make your web browsing experience as integrated as possible. Presently supported mail services are Gmail, Yahoo and AOL mail.

Summing it up…

“I have been using Flock for almost two months and i liked it. It gives me ease to check mails, blog posting, image/video searching, searching though a whole lot of websites, maintaining RSS feeds, my social networks etc. But as i mentioned earlier, its not for those who just browse internet for mails and general things.If you are deep into Social web and a core web 2.0 savvy guy then this is a ‘must-have’ for you……  Try it !“

Orkut majorly dominates Brazilian and Indian market.In India,there are local competitors like Bigadda and ibibo which are also fueling big bucks into their systems but Orkut is unarguably the winner of young indian hearts.

But this Google’s service is still struggling for the monetory returns it was looking for.The ROI of Orkut is below expectations and there are rumours that Google may eventually shutdown Orkut(like Yahoo’s recent shutdown of their social networking service ‘Mash‘) or rather sell it out to a local business player (Indian or Brazilian).There are a number of factors which lead a social network to a poor ROI and consequent shutdown that we have already covered here

But one thing that forces Google to keep floating in social networking market is the future growth and worth of internet population of Indians and brazilians.Its also the only Google’s representative in social networking sector.Hence,Google is trying its level hard to survive this crunch situation.

Advertisements,being the only method of earning for them through the massive pageview counts(in billions) they generate has been smartly crafted and implemented by Orkut.They are attempting ad monetization very carefully(just too carefully),taking into consideration a user’s tolerance for intrusion into his personal space.

The two places where they prominently monetize are communities and user’s profiles(to a lesser extent).

Doing minimum intrusion,they advertise at the ‘lowest worth real estate’(right bottom) of a user’s profile and also at an infrequent rate.

They take maximum revenues out of communities(as ads doesn’t intrude anybody’s personal space here).

They advertise their own services such as Youtube and Google Maps usually in case of lack of relevant ad inventory.

The most recent experiment that they have tried out is somewhat similar to ‘news feeds like‘ ads which they also exercise in Gmail.This is,infact proving effective and not intrusive.Take a look

This is the ad format used in Gmail

And this is what they have started showing on Orkut(communities section)

It appears more of a news feed(they have even named the section as ‘related news’) rather than an advertisement and also looks unintrusive.

………………………………………………………….

Conclusion 

Orkut will remain Google’s property(no sell-out) and will start giving back to Google within next 2-3 years

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Update : Orkut has recently reverted back one of its actions that was bugging orkut users since its implementation : ‘Link suppression’. Here’s the full post.

Recently,Facebook came into limelight for disabling few user accounts just because those users were majorly spending their time on Facebook playing a game called PackRat.Facebook justified it saying that the game is so addictive that many guys create new facebook accounts just for the sake of playing PackRat and not for the actual purpose of this ‘Social Utility’.

Such accounts,which rather ill-utilize the ‘social utility’ are a burden to the website and hence may be banned.

The mail which was sent to the user who got banned also stated that

Facebook isn’t a social network (it’s a “social utility”) and isn’t meant to build large groups of new friends. Instead, Facebook is meant to reinforce “pre-existing” social connections”

After a lot of user outburst and a cluster of clarifications from FB guys,it seems that Facebook is firm on its definition of being a “social utility” and not a “social network”

This is how Facebook defines itself(officially)

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet

So what about MySpace and Orkut ? Are they Social networks or not ?

And by the term “Social Network”,we mean “Where new friendships are appreciated”.

MySpace defines itself this way…

MySpace is an online community that lets you meet your friends’ friends.Create a community on MySpace and you can share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends!

This sounds more like a “Social Network”

Let’s see how Orkut defines itself…

Orkut is an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating. Orkut‘s social network can help you maintain existing relationships with pictures and messages, and establish new ones by reaching out to people you’ve never met before

This sounds a typical ‘Social Network’(they have even used the term ‘social network’ in defining themselves)

Final verdict 

• Facebook is a Social Utility
• MySpace is strategic and plays dual role
• Orkut is a  Social Network 

Orkut for instance,has a massive following in Brazil and India but when it comes to monetizing its network,it is still struggling to even find a ray of hope.One reason can be below average(compared to myspace,facebook) CPM rates as the majority of the audience isn’t from the US.Due to meagre payback,there were rumours that Google might close its doors as anymore investment won’t be worth it.(BTW,Yahoo! recently announced its social network Mash’s Shutdown)

Myspace and Facebook are also finding it hard to get healthy returns from their huge networks(which comprises majorly of US visitors).According to compete,Facebook is currently commanding 59.4 Mn unique visitors and Myspace,having around 38.2 Mn visitors and pageviews are in multi-billions but the networking gaints,besides their best efforts aren’t able to leverage max. from their properties.

Here are the 5 reasons which are to be blamed for all this…

• Low CPM Ad inventory : Not just Orkut,but Myspace,Facebook,Bebo and many others are no exception when it comes to CPM rates.They are way too low than any content driven website’s CPM rates.Lookery,a social media Ad network offers display ads on Myspace,Facebook and Bebo for as low as 13 cents per thousand page impressions(CPM).In contrast,CBS charges $50 and NBC as much as $75 for the same number of pageviews.
• Right ads,Wrong audience : In a social network,the maximum probability of monetization is from the ads that are of adult nature(probably a dating site,or a porno site,if allowed by the network).But such advertisements deplete the image of a social network as a whole.On the contrary,the ad inventory is huge in technology sector(ex. web hosting,software selling etc) but the right audience for such ads is hard to find in social networks.This mismatch results in pathetic conversion.
• Crappy user data :Going by the facts,more than 65% of the members of any social network maintain a fake profile.This means,fake user information(such as age,sex,marital status,qualification,hobbies etc) which results in poor judgement of user behaviour,hence “Ad-audience mismatch“.
• Over-sensitive audience : The outburst of Facebook users on Beacon implementation which resulted in its immediate removal clearly indicates the growing user authority over the social networks.As the options are plenty in number for a user to choose another site for its social pass-time,no social network is ready to experiment with their existing audiences anymore.
• Placement limitations : Majority of the hottest areas of Ad monetization(ex. middle,top,left and right panel) are dedicated to other relevant things from a user’s perspective(ex. user pic,friends,communities etc),which leaves the site owners with residual real estate to monetize.

What next ?

If social networks do not find a way out to get rid of these issues,we will witness more shutdowns like Mash’s in the near future.The biggest two will continue to survive because of their huge userbase.

Today,majority of the web-addicts can be found twittering,blogging or roaming in their social networks(Facebook,Myspace,Orkut etc) and most of them find it refreshing as well.

But the need of introducing novelty in conventional social networking is ever demanding.

Hurox(pronounced as “who rocks”) , promises to fulfill this need.It assures to be not-so-average social network,inculcating many features and utilities into your “New Social Network”.

With their tagline as… “Create,Share and Sell” ,Hurox pitches it’s ability to blend a usual social network with creative and profitable aspects associated with every user.

What it offers…

• Customize your profile in appearance to the maximum extent possible
• Create web pages,using In-built easy-to-use tools within your account
• Earn money for whatever you create.It may be a webpage, an image,video etc which you created and got sold as well
• Explore your network with all the usual tools provided in major networking sites

Why it can be the NEXT BIG THING !

• Utility inclusion – Utilities like twitter,blog and related stuff are packed within Hurox to let all your friends know your current status and blogs created, within Hurox only to improve your visibility.
• Money incentives – No social network,till date facilitates the users to earn from from what they may create.This clearly adds to the pros of Hurox
• Vitrified UI – The user interface has been given a prior attention by Hurox team as the sensible and sophisticated application of ajax and javascript makes it a hassle-free interface to experience
• Novelty – It’s for the first time that a social network has been conceptualised to let its users sell their creativity by the use of easy-to-use tools and in-built money transaction system

Why it may prove to be a Web Struggler !

• Lack of practical approach – The tools that Hurox provides are good to have fun with but can hardly produce something really extravagent.In a situation where napster is forced to sell its music for $0.99 per song,it seems impractical for a user to buy a funny webpage for even few cents
• Saturation – Talk about a social network and here comes the answer : Myspace,Facebook,Orkut…what else ? .The major problem is that social networks take time to build and majority of the web users are bound to the mentioned sites in some way or the other.It’s a hard-rock task to create an identity in this sector
• Too sophisticated – Different people,different opinions.A tech-savvy user may take the involved technology and overall experience as a positive point but a conventional(still in majority) web user may find it a bit uncomfortable,with loads of unnecessary technology involved in it.