Xing Adds Google Maps for Visual Representation of Your Contacts
“Both Xing and LinkedIn have been layering in more and more social and resource-oriented features into their professional networking sites, for the purpose of providing more helpful information about a personal contact list in an immediate fashion. The latest move by Xing is the inclusion of Google maps, which displays your friends’ designated location.

Mobile Social Networks To See Sky High Ad Revenues By 2012?
“If you were to believe mobile social networks about their advertising predictions, they will by 2012 be raking in between $28 to $52 billion dollars in ad revenue. Given that normal online ad revenue only broke $27 billion for the first time in 2007, and with predicted drops in ad budgets due to the economic recession, the mobile predictions seem a bit hard to swallow.”

Six Impossible Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog
“This week, I’m proposing to you, six impossible things that will make your blog more interesting, more appealing, or just that little important bit more popular.”

When Will Facebook Be Ready For Business?
“For awhile we’ve been pushing the idea of Facebook evolving to support business social networking alongside the “social” social networking. But in order for that to work, the site needs to find a way to shed its image as a beacon of college hooliganism — Facebook is a place to post party pictures, not product pitches. But even so, the appeal of leveraging Facebook’s social graph for business is too good to pass up. As we’ve noted in the past, there are already huge business networks on Facebook — 30,000 Microsoft employees, 8,500 Googlers, etc. Those relationships are ripe for exploiting for business networking, but there is a prevailing feeling that that’s not what Facebook is for.”

No Facebook?  No Thanks.  No Job.
“Stop the press! It would appear that modern man, if given the choice between the lure of monetary gain or the comfort of online communication would rather pass over the former if the latter is not also included.

[SociaList] Social Networking News Blurbs (May 8, 2008)

Apparently, “everyone is talking about mobile social networking” with eMarketer forecasting that “mobile social networking will grow from 82 million users in 2007 to over 800 million worldwide by 2012.” Social networking isn’t only about mobile, though, and certainly isn’t just for fun. Enterprise social networking is all the rage and Rachel Happe, IDC’s research manager for digital business economy, explains that “the technology is popular because companies are discovering the use of applications spawned by the popularity of Facebook and Myspace have business benefits.” “The study, which predicts the market could reach $2 billion by 2012, includes any software often deployed as a service paid for by enterprises to enable communities, either internal or external, such as KickApps, Passenger and hi5.”

We’ve written and posted headlines previously about the HR ramifications of social networking and social media and how more and more employers are using the social sphere to mine potentially harmful personal data about job prospects.  Well, apparently more employers are trying to take a more positive approach as Brian Singh, Managing Director of ZINC Research explains: “while the platform presents many opportunities and cost efficiencies for marketing and information, it is its strength in connection and engagement that can be used to attract and retain talent and build a vibrant company culture.  Why shut down access when you can leverage your best assets - your employees.”

Want to recession proof your life?  Social networking may be the answer.  “Online social networking is not only for socializing, but can be used for career building. The career building is enabled by creating an online presence to showcase skills, and extended by creating networks of online (and offline or “live”) connections. These connections can be very helpful in finding out about job opportunities or companies that will be hiring.” Just don’t get carried away and start spamming: “In a recent six-month period, Cloudmark tracked a 300 percent increase in spam on a large social networking site that it works with. Also, at several major social networking sites, about one-third of new accounts created are fraudulent, designed for spam and other attacks, the company said.

If you hold a black Amex, perhaps you may want to ensure you’re just as much of a VIP online as you are (or want to be) off.  If this is the case, here’s how to crack the world’s VIP social networking websites

• JuiceCaster Nominated for Best Mobile Social Networking Solution in the 12th Annual Webby Awards
  “LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The 12^th Annual Webby Awards has nominated Juice Wireless’ mobile social networking application, JuiceCaster, for the Best Mobile Social Networking solution of 2008. The Webby Awards will announce the winners on May 6, 2008 and honor them at a star-studded gala in New York City on June 10. Additionally, from now through May 1, fans around the world can cast their votes for JuiceCaster in The Webby People’s Voice Awards presented by Nokia by visiting www.JuiceCaster.com.”
• Raketu Releases New Mobile Social Networking - Now Users Can Contribute, Communicate, and Share from Their Desktops and Mobile Devices Anywhere
  “NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Raketu, a leading global Internet communications, information, and entertainment company, today released its mobile social networking application. In addition to Raketu’s voice calling, SMS-Texting, file sharing and other communications, information and entertainment services, the new application allows any user, anywhere, to contribute, share and interact from any device. Raketu’s new Mobile Social Networking is also available on any desktop through the browser and the Raketu download client, so that users on Raketu’s website, mobile websites and from the download client can actively participate and share information in their social network no matter where they are.”
• Wirenode: Create Mobile Sites in Facebook
  “Wirenode is a startup from the Prague, Czech Republic. It’s platform for mobile publishing. Everybody can create mobile friendly website very easily, with no technology knowledge in their web browser. Created mobile websites are immediately accessible from all types of mobile phones. You can create mobile website with multiple pages, images, mobile RSS etc…
  Free version of the service is used by individuals, who created more than 6000 mobile pages. Premium version is used by marketing agencies and mobile operators for creating landing pages and small mobile portals for mobile marketing purposes.”
• Itsmy.com Reaches 1 Million Users on Mobile Phones
  “April 9, 2008 (Munich, New York, London, Madrid) – itsmy.com, one of the world’s fastest growing mobile-only social networks, has announced one million registered users. The ad-funded mobile community dedicates every user a free personalisable mobile homepage with a unique mobile web address (myname.itsmy.com) to show and tell all friends – the main reason for the fast viral growth. All users register via the browser of their mobile phone in mobile internet, wherever they are. Gofresh, the company behind itsmy.com, is a Telecommunications company with main focus on live entertainment combined with social networking - wherever, whenever. Gofresh targets with itsmy.com the leadership for off-portal mobile communities in US and EU in 2008.”
• 28 Million Mobile Subscribers Responded To At Least One Mobile Ad
  “According to a new report from The Nielsen Company, twenty-three percent (58 million) of all U.S. mobile subscribers say they’ve been exposed to advertising on their phones in the past 30 days. Half (51% or 28 million) of all data users who recall seeing mobile advertising in the previous 30 days say they responded to a mobile ad.”
• Frengo’s Mobile Toolkit Makes Your OpenSocial Apps Mobile
  “Mobile media company Frengo has revealed its OpenSocial mobile Toolkit today, enabling developers to “share” their existing applications from other OpenSocial participating networks for mobile use. In order to support this, Frengo has created an OpenSocial-compliant mobile platform, which means mobile extension for your existing apps. RockYou is a launch partner.”

Here are just a few of the latest headlines in the social networking realm. Both positive and negative, the social networking space is shifting and evolving with every day that passes as the expanding force of social networks adjust and re-adjust their approaches and strategies in light of changing statistics, problems, and breakthroughs.

It’s interesting to note that it seems more and more people are realizing that turnkey social networking platforms (e.g. “launch your social network in minutes!”) may not always be the best route to take. A custom, scalable social networking website built with innovative spins on “same-old-same-old” features combined with a new level of usability and integration with other non-networking based features may be the way of the future. It’s still very possible to create a hit as exciting news in mobile social networking, continued interest, and a shake-out of the clutter leaves room for the remarkable sites to rise to the top.

• Mobile Social Networking Revenues Could Reach $52 Billion Within 4 Years
  “Mobile Social Networking is already an established service in some regions, but in 2008 and beyond new features are attracting larger numbers of users and permitting new business opportunities. Mobile Social Networking is now a global phenomenon with expansion in all directions.”
  Couldn’t agree more and that’s why our entire team is focused on mobile social networking as the next level of our custom social networking services…
• Facebook’s Membership “Stickiness”
  “Are you a member of Facebook.com? You may have a lifetime contract.”
  They’re at it again!
• The Many Challenges of Social Network Sites
  “From white label social networks to existing social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and on, there’s been much hoopa raised. Yet, we should always remember the challenges that are facing these tools, as there are many difficulties to overcome.”
  Excellent points of contention; each obstacle can be overcome, but the overall lesson is that it isn’t easy to build a vibrant community and a great deal of strategy, planning, and innovation should exist in order to spawn success.
• Social Networks Still Going Strong, Engagement Leveling Off
  “Stats to be released tomorrow by comScore show that traffic to most of the top social networking sites is continuing to increase in the US, although the amount of time users spend on such sites is leveling off. For example, while MySpace is showing 11.6% year-to-year growth in unique visitors and Facebook is up 78.6%, the amount of time the average user spends on each site is down 10.4% and up just 1.1%, respectively.”
  Time spent and repetition of visits will be the name of the game as social networking evolves.