Social Networks Demo

older women are more likely than older men to use social networking sites. Half (52%) of female internet users ages 65+ are social networking site adopters, compared with 39% of older men.

round is being led by Sam Altman, the CEO of Y Combinator, the startup incubator where co-founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman first launched Reddit in 2005 — and among the individual investors who are participating in the financing are two Y Combinator partners: founder Jessica Livingston and Gmail creator Paul Buchheit (Ohanian recently became a partner at Y Combinator).

individual investors in the round include early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, actor and singer Jared Leto, Eventbrite co-founders Kevin and Julia Hartz, Minted CEO Mariam Naficy and Reddit CEO Yishan Wong. Previous investors in an angel-only Series A last year included Ohanian, Reddit executive Ellen Pao, YouTube founder Jawed Karim, former Square COO Keith Rabois and Marc Andreessen.

gives Reddit more financial freedom than it has had in the past as a unit of Advance Publications, the parent company of the Conde Nast magazine family. Advance acquired the company in 2006 and spun it out three years ago as an independent entity, but retained control over its finances (and still owns more than half the shares, according to one report).

Reddit also convinced all of the investors in the financing to give 10 percent of their shares to users, “in recognition of the central role the community plays in reddit’s ongoing success.

crypto-currency that would be exchangeable for shares in the company

one of the most significant challenges for Reddit as it tries to justify the valuation it has been given is the tension between wanting to grow and reach a broader audience — and, most importantly, to reach advertisers who can help monetize the site — and the nature of the community itself.

One of the most powerful things about Reddit as a community is the freedom that it gives users, and especially the freedom to create forums on whatever topics someone happens to be interested in, including disturbing content like pictures of female corpses and links to bestiality.

Ohanian has talked in the past about the importance of Reddit’s commitment to free speech, even uncomfortable kinds of speech, and its commitment to anonymity

$500-million-plus valuation

need to attract advertisers and large media brands

desire to become more of a journalistic entity by giving users tools such as the live-reporting feature Reddit launched earlier this year

Six days after signup, about 20 percent of users remain active (which RJMetrics defines as users who have “actually posted” from the account)

Twenty percent of Ello users are still active four, five, and six days after signing up

VK facilitates two things that young people want to do: search for sexual partners and watch (pirated) newly released movies.

According to the Russian users I’ve been chatting to, that has essentially turned the site into a free and comprehensive dating service as well as a social network one

Good dating apps linked to your social media profile are incredibly popula

VK also allows piracy to go almost unchecked. VK has an enormous catalogue of pirated moves. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, it is one of the most egregious piracy sites in the world

(VK’s boss recently offered Snowdon a job helping to improve encryption; he hasn't answered

19% on Xing (specially in Germany) and 1% on Linkedin

Linkedin is betting on advertising as its main business, while 54% of its revenues are generated off-line. It’s true though that paid subscriptions are much more expensive on Linkedin (starting at 20$/month) than on Xing (5$/month).

The third network, Viadeo, is very well positioned in French-speaking countries. In Madagascar, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, France, Tunisia, Cote d’Ivoire and Morocco, it is among the Top 100 sites. In Algeria, Belgium and Switzerland it is among the top 500.

Japan is another relevant market in which none of the three big professional networks has broken in. While Linkedin only has 0,9 million members in Japan, there is a local social network which has some professional attributes, Mixi, with around 27 million members.

Besides, News Corporation, owner of The Wall Street Journal, is launching its own social network and instant messaging service for financial clients

In terms of premium members, 97% of them (786,000) are in the D-A-CH region.

This type of bloat and the company’s flashy office space contributed to a burn rate that was as high as $2.5 million per month at one point, according to sources close to the company.

including his obsessiveness over design and his proclivity for spending

ath offers a $14.99 annual Premium subscription, as well as monthly and a la carte options. How big that business can become is another matter, however.

It was up against Instagram, which had none of those same advantages, and yet won handily.

caving on Path’s initial 50-person network size limits and then getting distracted by competing around photo-sharing with the more popular Instagram

Foursquare has raised its own warchest of $162 million at ever increasing valuations. But it has faced serious headwinds with recent rounds – while struggling to grow its audience beyond a few million loyal users and to drive real economic value from their location-sharing activity.

And Foursquare still has a primarily North American audience, not to mention heaps of real-time location and intent data to wave in front of advertisers.

Mobli wanted the live broadcast, pay-per-view service.

Brand Clusters:

commentary from many disconnected participants

The larger the population talking about a brand, the less likely it is that participants are connected to one another. Brand-mentioning participants focus on a topic, but tend not to connect to each other.

they are relaying or passing along the message of the institution or person and there is no extra exchange of ideas

many people repeat what prominent news and media organizations tweet

popular topics may develop multiple smaller groups, which often form around a few hubs each with its own audience, influencers, and sources of information.

Global news stories often attract coverage from many news outlets, each with its own following. That creates a collection of medium-sized groups—and a fair number of isolates

diverse angles on a subject based on its relevance to different audiences, revealing a diversity of opinion and perspective on a social media topic.

Broadcast Network:

breaking news stories

Community Clusters:

The members of the Broadcast Network audience are often connected only to the hub news source, without connecting to one another.

Support Network:

hub and spoke structure

hub account replies to many otherwise disconnected users, creating outward spokes. In contrast, in the Broadcast pattern, the hub gets replied to or retweeted by many disconnected people, creating inward spokes.

Social media is increasingly home to civil society, the place where knowledge sharing, public discussions, debates, and disputes are carried out. As the new public square, social media conversations are as important to document as any other large public gathering.

broad awareness social media users have of their networks might make them more hesitant to speak up because they are especially tuned into the opinions of those around them.

The typical Facebook user—someone who logs onto the site a few times per day—is half as likely to be willing to have a discussion about the Snowden-NSA issues at a physical public meeting as a non-Facebook user.

Previous research has shown that when people decide whether to speak out about an issue, they rely on reference groups—friendships and community ties—to weigh their opinion relative to their peers.

Those who do not feel that their Facebook friends or Twitter followers agree with their opinion are more likely to self-censor their views on the Snowden-NSA story in many circumstances—in social media and in face-to-face encounters.

it is common for social media users to be mistaken about their friends’ beliefs and to be surprised once they discover their friends’ actual views via social media.

Some people may prefer not to share their views on social media because their posts persist and can be found later—perhaps by prospective employers or others with high status.

the social and political climate in which people share opinions depends on several other things:

Their confidence in how much they know.

The intensity of their opinions.

Their level of interest.

social media was not a common source of news for most Americans. Traditional broadcast news sources were by far the most common sources

his study focuses on one specific public affairs issue that was of interest to most Americans: the Snowden-NSA revelations. It is not an exhaustive review of all public policy issues and the way they are discussed in social media.

Just over a third, 37%, say a friend’s recommendation is a major reason they click on news links, and only 20% say a major reason is because the post is from a news organization they prefer.

Half of social network site users have shared news stories, images or videos , and nearly as many  (46%) have discussed a news issue or event.

although only 3% of the U.S. population use reddit, for those that do, getting news there is a major draw–62% have gotten news from the site.

YouTube is the next biggest social news pathway — about half of Americans use the site, and a fifth of them get news there, which translates to 10% of the adult population and puts the site on par with Twitter. Twitter reaches 16% of Americans and half of those users say they get news there, or 8% of Americans.

In addition to sharing news on social media, a small number are also covering the news themselves, by posting photos or videos of news events. Pew Research found that in 2014, 14% of social media users posted their own photos of news events to a social networking site, while 12% had posted videos. This practice has played a role in a number of recent breaking news events, including the riots in Ferguson, Mo.

visitors who go to a news media website directly spend roughly three times as long as those who wind up there through search or Facebook, and they view roughly five times as many pages per month.

Facebook users are experiencing a relatively diverse array of news stories on the site — roughly half of Facebook users regularly see six different topic areas.

most common news people see is entertainment news: 73% of Facebook users regularly see this kind of content on the site. 

 Unlike Twitter, where a core function is the distribution of information as news breaks, Facebook is not yet a place many turn to for learning about breaking news. (Though the company may be trying to change that by tweaking its algorithm to make the posts appearing in newsfeed more timely.)

social media doesn’t always facilitate conversation around the important issues of the day. In fact, we found people were less willing to discuss their opinion on the Snowden-NSA story on social media than they were in person.