Learn how sites like Facebook, Twitter,

MySpace, YouTube, Flixster, RockYou, Slide

and Plaxo grew their Social Networks

growth

Out now on Amazon

Aug 2010
“Essential Social Media knowledge to
grow your business...”

Growing your social Categories

network for digital
marketing enthusiasts Import Data 3
Export Data 6
The white paper is for marketers interested in
digital marketing and growing their brand’s
Building external Applications 9
social network. The paper contains real case Building API 3s 12
studies of successful social networks, which
Tips for growing online social network 15
gives you a perspective of how others did it.

Henderson Kite -
Midnight
Paper developed in collaboration with Raj Anand, Digital Consultancy and
Midnight, Media Consultancy

Raj Anand: +44 (0) 208 1333 676| raj.anand@hendersonkite.com

Midnight: +44 (0) 870 0844144 | enquiries@midnight.co.uk

May 2009. Noncommercial creative commons licence: You can copy,

distribute, display, and perform our work - and derivative works based
upon it - but for non-commercial purposes only. For commercial purpose
please contact Raj Anand on raj.anand@hendersonkite.com
What can I expect from this paper?
Introduction

Background
Growing a social network without an
existing user base can be difficult. This
document looks at how significant
growth was achieved by existing
social networks. including Facebook,
Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flixster,
RockYou, Slide and Plaxo. The
document discusses how these tactics
can be implemented to the benefit of
new social networks.

Is this paper for me?

This document is aimed at marketers
with an interest in digital media and
online communities.

The paper is also useful for

technologists who want to understand
the implications of online applications
on their business.

A jargon buster is provided on page

17 to explain any technical language
used.

Source: Khalid Almasoud

growth
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
 Trenz Pruca Fringilla Viverr Fermen Pede
Ferhoncus de plub Aliquam de Mantis Seargente de Fermentum Vestibulum Bibendum

Omare foremne Leo Praesen Urna Semper Uam Scelerisque

Mauris Vitaequam Chauncey de Billuptus Maecenas Interdum

Lemacord Promwn Diam Nobis Orci Aliquam Cras Maecenas

Senmaris Calla Ipsum Vivamus Nunc Curabitur Leo

Eget Toque Nobis Eget Tortor Rasellus

Import Data
Aliquam de Manti Sed accumsan Libero Quisque Porta

MySpace and Facebook are good examples of sites that allow users to build
applications and bring their own information from other websites. This allows
these websites to constantly grow and evolve according to the changing
demands of their users.

Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy


MySpace evolution
Many social media commentators
described MySpace, an online social
network with over 100 million users, as the
open evolution of Friendster 1. The latter was
very restrictive as it, limited user self-
expression.. Members of the site reacted by
moving to MySpace, creating detailed
profiles complete with large amounts of
multimedia. Users hacked their profiles using
HTML 2 to make them more expressive.
MySpace didn't stop them and welcomed
this exploration of its- platform . As a result,
the cultural enthusiasm was nurtured and it
grew and grew...
Power of HTML 2
For many, MySpace was a step up from
the existing social networks available at the
time. Due to the primitive nature of those
social networks , HTML 2 embeds (like
Members (in million) on MySpace V/S Month - Year
150
120
90
60
30
0
05/04 10/04 02/05 06/05 10/05 02/06 06/06 10/06
Source: Mychurch.org Registered members (in million)
Source: Joits
slideshow widgets, videos etc) were seen as
an acceptable way to export data. This
allowed musicians to bring their MP3 4s,
slide shows etc from external sources.Now
HTML embeds have been replaced by API 3s
(Application Programming Interface).
Results
MySpace is a fantastic example of the
organic growth of a social network. The
graph below shows the rate at which
MySpace grew its users, with both its
members and unique visitors increasing over
time. Impressively, comScore 5 data shows
that MySpace had 37 million unique visitors
in February 2006, up five-fold from the
previous year.
In conclusion, MySpace showcased that
users want to personalise their profiles and
import data from all around the web
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
Myspace facts
Things you probably
didn’t know about
MySpace
1. 76 million unique users
By the end of 2008, MySpace had 76
million unique users as reported by
comScore, growing at 10% per year.
2. MySpace larger than Facebook
MySpace is still the most used social
network in the US. It sees 76 million
unique users as opposed to
Facebook’s 54.5 million users per
month.
3. MySpace made $1bn in 2008
Last we heard, MySpace was on
target to hit $1bn in revenue in 2008.
MySpace has certainly had some
help from Google for a guaranteed
revenue deal, which provides search
for MySpace.
4. MySpaceId 6 and Open Social
After successfully releasing MySpace
applications made on Google’s Open
Social platform. MySpace is now set
to launch MySpaceID which allows
users' activities to be exported to any
external site. Developers can then
stream feeds like photos, events and
music.
Summary
MySpace is a fantastic example of
users demonstrating a strong desire to
import their private multimedia and
content from other sites. Even a basic
HTML 2 editor for personalisation,
which is difficult to digest for an
average user, makes the site
compelling enough for people to
adopt it.

Facebook evolution
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook
with fellow computer science major students
at Harvard University. Website membership
was initially limited to Harvard students, but
was expanded to other colleges in the
Boston area and then the Ivy League. It was
later extended further to include any
university student, then high school students,
and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.
Facebook Apps
Facebook’s first major growth as a
social network has been attributed to the
introduction of Facebook Applications.
Compete 8’s data shows (below) that
Facebook activity grew 32% from May to
August, 2007, with more than a third of the
growth coming from its new applications.
Applications had a big buy in from users
and application developers alike. During the
middle of 2007, the number of published
Launch of Facebook Platform
Facebook Applications
Source: Robelto
apps continued to grow steadily to over
32,000.
To make the applications a reality,
Facebook developed an entire platform to
provide a framework for third-party
developers to create applications that
interact with core Facebook features and a
Mark-up Language (FBML 9), a variant of
HTML 2, for developers to customise look
and feel of applications.
Results
Facebook has been constantly evolving
its user base and platform. It now has
57,514 apps with over 200,000 active
developers. Typically, applications are used
34 million times every day and have a
combined valuation of approximately
$269.3 million (April 2009).
Source: Compete.com
(US audience only)
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
Facebook facts
Things you probably
didn’t know about
Facebook
1. 25 million users joined in 5 weeks
Mid-February 2009 Facebook hit 175
million registered users, just five
weeks after it hit 150 million users in
January. At this rate, Facebook has
been growing by well over 600,000
users per day .
2. Quick growth from 35-49 year olds
Facebook’s greatest growth in global
audience numbers has come from
people aged 35-49 says Nielsen
Online. 34.4% of Facebook’s users
between December 2007 to
December 2008 were from this age
group.
3. Facebook on mobile phone
Facebook is one of the most popular
social networks in Europe and the US.
Mobile applications for handsets,
such as Apple’s iPhone, are playing a
substantial role in expanding
Facebook’s usage. In April 2009
Facebook had 6.4 million active
iPhone users.
4. 3.1 million Facebook Developers
Currently Facebook has over
3,098,000 (March 2009) users
registered as developers. Although
only a small proportion of these users
have developed the 33,000+
applications (July 2008).
Summary
Making a proprietary platform which
allows developers to build on your
infrastructure is an investment worth
making. Facebook’s example shows
that a good platform can both
increase the site’s usage, and also
expand the community of developers.
This allows the website to constantly
develop and evolve.
 Trenz Pruca Fringilla Viverr Fermen Pede
Ferhoncus de plub Aliquam de Mantis Seargente de Fermentum Vestibulum Bibendum

Omare foremne Leo Praesen Urna Semper Uam Scelerisque

Mauris Vitaequam Chauncey de Billuptus Maecenas Interdum

Lemacord Promwn Diam Nobis Orci Aliquam Cras Maecenas

Senmaris Calla Ipsum Vivamus Nunc Curabitur Leo

Eget Toque Nobis Eget Tortor Rasellus

Export Data
Aliquam de Manti Sed accumsan Libero Quisque Porta

YouTube and Slide demonstrate the ability to export technology to other

websites. Certainly a tried and tested way to grow a social network .

Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy


Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sko11ie/
YouTube evolution
For the first nine months (February -
November 2005) of YouTube’s existence, it
didn't see significant user growth and was
focused on product development. The
Californian based company was spending
colossal amounts of money on servers
already and wasn’t prepared to spend a lot
on PR. That left them with little to no money
to market the product.
Then a decision was made to allow
users to spread the word on their behalf.
They allowed users to embed videos to
blogs, websites and especially MySpace
pages. That's when the exponential growth
actually began.
Google acquires YouTube
Google’s acquisition of YouTube, for
$1.65 billion, came as a surprise for many
Visitors (in million) on YouTube V/S Months (in business)
20
16
12
User’s allowed to embed videos
8 This is a fantastic example of a
4 deconstruction of the Web into small,
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Source: Compete Blog Visitors on YouTube (in million)
(US audience only)
given that Google had a competing product
in the market, Google Video. YouTube used
a technology called Flash, which isn’t
fantastic for search engine rankings but
does easily embed. Google stayed away
from Flash , making it more tricky to embed
videos on various sites. Google ended up
acquiring YouTube for a reported $1.65
billion.
Results
YouTube now has the largest share of
the US online video market, accounting for
41per cent of online videos viewed and just
under 100 million unique viewers.
Google’s acquisition of YouTube
allowed it to continue to rank as the top US
video property with 5.3 billion videos
viewed in just one month. Google now has a
huge market share, with YouTube accounting
for more than 99 per cent of all videos
viewed at the property.
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
YouTube facts
Things you probably
didn’t know about
YouTube
1. Second most used search engine
Video search on YouTube accounts
for a quarter of all Google search
queries in the US, according to the
latest search engine numbers from
comScore 5.
2. Totally customise the video player
Wordia’s YouTube video (below)
looks like Vimeo. This is possible using
YouTube’s Player API 3’s. For details
see : Youtube Player APIs
3. Widget view v/s YouTube
Youtube recently unveiled that 44 per
cent of its videos are watched through
players embedded on other sites.
Given that 5.3 billion videos were
watched in February 2009,
embedded video accounts for 2.3
billion videos.
4. YouTube’s revenue
In 2008 YouTube will generate about
$100 million in the US (with 100
million users),compared to about $70
million at Hulu (with 34.7 million
users). Next year both sites will
generate about $180 million in the
US.
Summary
The ability to embed a product like
videos on a personal website or
profile is a powerful way to get more
people to know about your product.
phenomenon called the
‘Widgetization of the web’. Which is
single-purpose applications called
widgets or gadgets.

Slide evolution
Slide.com, as the name suggests, is
aimed at users looking to build a picture
slideshow. Users can quickly upload images
and get customised players for their images.
The majority of the site’s users build
slideshows for their MySpace profiles and
other social networking pages.
Customisation of these players and their
social networking pages was key for these
users.
Growth of Slide
The growth of slide was, in part, due to
its popularity on social networks like
MySpace and Facebook. Slide managed to
place three of its widget offerings in the top
10 spot for Facebook applications, with
success largely attributed to the viral nature
of the applications and slide.com’s first
movers advantage (i.e.Slide.com was one of
the first application developers on
Facebook). Slide’s presence on this large
social network has no doubt aided in its
popularity. With other networks like Hi5 and
Bebo supporting Slide for easy picture
imports, it continues to become a staple in
the social networking widget world.
Results
The San Francisco based company had
more than 134 million unique viewers of its
widgets per month in September 2008 (up
from 117 million in March 2008), giving it a
lead over rival widget-makers like RockYou.
In April 2007 Slide.com received 13.8% of
all worldwide online audience.
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
Slide.com facts
Things you probably
didn’t know about
Slide
1. Million widgets per day
Slide serves more than one million
widgets per day. This does not include
the Facebook widgets, which
contribute to the majority of its
usership.
2. Slide’s Facebook apps
Two of Slides Facebook widgets are
in the top 10 most visited applications
on Facebook. These two applications,
Top Friends and Super poke,
attracted up to 4.4 million users per
day in 2008.
3. Slide top ten most popular web
In May 2008 comScore 5 reported
Slide Network, which includes its
Facebook applications, to be the ninth
most visited site on the planet serving
155 million unique users per year.
4. Slide.com buys app for $60K
Apart from expanding its market via
its own Facebook applications, Slide
also acquired application Favourite
Peeps for a reported $60,000.
Favourite Peeps was the 14th most
popular application on Facebook with
approximately 1.3 million users and
was growing at about 2.3 per cent
(30,000 users) per day. The reported
acquisition price values each user of
the Facebook app at about $0.046.
Summary
Slide.com showcases the ability to
gain a massive increase in users by
making its application available in
Facebook and MySpace. Slide also
demonstrates that joining a platform
as an early adopter can increase the
visibility of products immensely.
Ferhoncus de plub
Omare foremne
Lemacord Promwn

Building External
Applications

Building custom tools for a specific website (in our examples Facebook) can
make users quickly adopt your website. The effects of user’s uptake will be
felt on your website i.e. outside Facebook.

Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy


About Flixster
Flixster is a social network for movie
lovers. It allows users to review movies using
social networking tools, rate movies, become
a fan and leave comments.
User Statistics
Flixster currently has over 50 million
registered users with over 1.5 billion movie
ratings, and has already outpaced (in total
page views) other movie sites such as
Fandango. While the site is still dwarfed in
terms of total page views by the more
information based IMDB 10, its emphasis is
on combining social networking with movies.
Total visitors (in 000) on Flixster V/S Month / Year
2,000
1,600
Growth via Facebook Application
1,200
800
400
0
03/06 05/06 07/06
Total visitors (in 000)
It’s rapid rise in user base makes for a
promising company future.
Flixster Growth
One of Flixster’s primary traffic drivers
is its Facebook Application,Movies, which
has consistently been one of the most
popular apps on the site. Daily user totals
peaked in December 2007, and, as of
November 2008, its 6.6 million monthly
active users place the Movies app at the
number eight spot among most-used
applications on Facebook.
09/06 11/06 01/07
Source: Compete Blog
(US audience only)
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
Flixster facts
Things you probably
didn’t know about
Flixster
1. Flixster founders background
Flixster’s founders are two relatively
young entrepreneurs, Joe Greenstein
and Saran Chari. They both worked
at Edusoft, a web-based assessment
platform for public school districts in
the US.
2. Flixster was born from...
Joe Greenstein’s frustration: He and
his then-girlfriend could never agree
on a movie. His and Saran Chari's
first effort was a basic operation
called WhoSawWhat.com.
3. Big in Philippines and Romania
Apart from the US, Romania and
Philippines have the majority of
Flixster’s userbase, followed by the
UK and Indonesia.
4. Flixster acquires iPhone App
Flixster acquired a popular iPhone
application called Movies.app in mid-
August 2008 and re-released the
application within a week. This is
perhaps the first acquisition of an
iPhone app. The application was
bought from a college student at
Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, USA.
Summary
Flixster is a social network for movies.
The network is another early
Facebook Application adopter. This
helped it get a lot of publicity and
visibility. Flixster focused on providing
movie reviews to users and used
various platforms including iPhone
and Facbeook.

RockYou evolution
RockYou (originally named RockMySpace)
creates and distributes self-expression
widgets. The widgets can be used to
enhance the look and feel of blogs, personal
websites and personal pages on social
networks such as Facebook, MySpace and
Bebo.
Explosive Growth
Since Facebook opened its platform for
developers, RockYou has stormed in and
become the network's most prolific and
popular developer of social applications.
The company also created Facebook's first
ad network, helping to give other
applications the initial traction they need
and offering a potent new way for brands
and advertisers to reach their audiences.
Furthermore, it has embraced Google's
OpenSocial standard and has taken the lead
among OpenSocial 7 applications on the
Unique visitors (in millions) v/s Month - Year
30
24
18
12
6 managed to constantly increase its
0
04/08 06/08 08/08 10/08
RockYou
Source: Niallkennedy
internationally popular social network, hi5.
Application Popularity
RockYou achieved a top Alexa reach of
0.49per cent up 112per cent within three
months. RockYou's Super Wall became the
top application on the Facebook platform
with over three million daily active users.
RockYou holds the number one position on
Facebook slideshows with over five times the
engagement versus its nearest competition:
42,294 to 7,315.
On the MySpace Platform, RockYou
owns three of the top 10 applications: Truth
Box, the first application to reach a million
users, Kiss Me, and Name Meaning.
RockYou's applications on launching on hi5
quickly became favourites amongst users.
For instance, the SuperFive application has
grown from 1.4 million user installs as of
April 7 2008, to over two million installs on
April 15.
12/08 02/09
Source: Compete Blog
Slide.com (US audience only)
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
RockYou facts
Things you probably
didn’t know about
RockYou
1. 30% of users use RockYou
RockYou widgets are now used by
over 30per cent of users on most
social networks. RockYou serves 150
million widgets per day reaching
approximately 80 million people per
month.
2. Series-C Funding from Japan and
Korea
Japanese mobile giant SoftBank and
Korean telecom investment company
SK Telecom Ventures invested $17
million into RockYou to create a new
joint venture to build applications for
the Asia-Pacific market. To date
RockYou has raised three rounds of
funding and a total of $68.5 million.
3. Branded social applications for
celebrities
In April 2009 RockYou announced
itsBackstage! application integration
platform. The platform allows
musicians, actors, celebrities, athletes
and other talent to connect with fans
and partner with consumer brands
across the world.
4. RockYou’s content distribution
experiment with Ashton Kutcher
RockYou conducted its first big content
distribution test with Ashton Kutcher’s
Katalyst Media. The site showed 1.8
million impressions in a single day for
Katalyst’s special Fashion Week
episode of its show Blah Girls. The
show was distributed with a mix of
autoplaying videos and click-to-play,
in ad units and as a featured video
within RockYou’s various applications,
such as Super Wall
Summary
RockYou’s growth has been partially
the result of building for the Facebook
platform and developing the first
advertising network. RockYou
users by opening its platform to
Google’s OpenSocial 7.
 Building API s 3

Creating a social network or environment which can accept tools built by

others, can dramatically increase the uptake of your network.

Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy


Twitter Introduction
Twitter is a social networking and micro-
blogging 11 service that enables its users to
send and read other users' updates, known
as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up
to 140 characters in length. Updates are
displayed on the user's profile page and
delivered to other users who have signed up
to receive them
Power of API 3
API 3 has been arguably the most
important thing Twitter has done. It allowed
Twitter to keep the service very simple. So
that developers can build on top of Twitters’
infrastructure. Users then came up with ideas
and built applications which have made
Twitter elegant, something a start-up of
Twitter’s size couldn’t have achieved it’s
resources otherwise. So, the API 3 easily has
10 times more traffic than the website.
Results
The latest numbers are in, and Twitter is
growing at a torrid pace. According to
statistics just released from Nielsen Online,
Twitter recorded 2.3 million unique visitors in
August 2008 (US-only), an increase of
422per cent from the same period the
previous year. Moreover, visitors to Twitter
spent 55per cent more time on the site on
average – a total of more than seven
minutes per user. Those numbers point to
rather robust growth for the site, especially
considering many of its most rabid users
access it through a third-party client like
Twhirl or Tweetdeck.
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
Twitter facts
Things you probably
didn’t know about
Twitter
1. Web most common twitter client
Although 10 times the traffic comes
from Twitter API 3s. 28.25% of users
still prefer Twitter.com to tweet
messages according to twitstat.com
2. Tweetdeck encourages tweeting
Tweetdeck is a UK based Twitter
product which recently secured angel
funding from The Accelerator Group.
It is the most used Twitter product (not
including Twitter.com) and statistics
show that users tweet 193% more
when using Tweetdeck as opposed to
its nearest competitor.
3. Twitter business model
Twitter’s venture capitalists say they
are not worried about when the
micro-blogging 11 start-up will start
making money. And why should they
be? The techies in the blogosphere
are taking care of that for them.
4. Twitter suggestion slot worth $250k
When newbies sign up to Twitter now,
they are presented with a list of 100
suggested users to start following.
Simply being on that list can boost
your followers well above 100,000.
Several people and organisations on
the list (such as Al Gore, Lance
Armstrong, Kevin Rose, the New York
Times, and CNN) now have more
than 250,000 followers each.
Summary
Twitter’s success story is mainly based
on opening its platform and allowing
programmers to build applications for
its API 3. Twitter’s growth and
innovation is driven by the
programmers who are constantly
innovating to make Twitter
applications.

Plaxo evolution
Plaxo is an online address book and
social networking service aimed at
professional and personal contacts. Once
contacts are stored in the central location, it
is possible to list connections between
contacts and access the address book from
anywhere. A Plaxo plug-in supports major
address books including Outlook, Mozilla
Thunderbird and Address Book on Mac OS
X 12.
Power of API 3
Plaxo was one of the first partners to
adopt Google’s OpenSocial 7 platform.
Plaxo has been a huge supporter of
empowering users to regain control of their
social data across all the tools they use.
This approach of converting users’
address books into a social network and
allowing them to move data around is a
good example of how to use third party
API3s. The launch of Plaxo Pulse in the
summer of 2007 made thecompany the
Comcast acquires Plaxo
Launch of Pulse
first “social web aggregator,”
pioneering the idea of seeing in a
single place what the people you care
about are sharing on sites all over the
web. Now, of course, there are other
such services like FriendFeed, Chi.mp
and Naymz.com.
Results
Plaxo has had a steady growth, decline
and then another growth phase. Plaxo was
acquired by Comcast in May 2008 for
between $150 million to $170 million. In
May 2008 Plaxo reported 20 million users
on its system. A quick look at the graph
below indicates that monthly use of the site
in the US is increasing constantly.
that their monthly usage in the US is
increasing constantly.
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
Plaxo facts
Things you probably
didn’t know about
Plaxo
1. Plaxo’s ex-Napster13 founder
Plaxo was founded by Napster co-
founder Sean Parker and two
Stanford engineering students, Todd
Masonis and Cameron Ring.
2. Plaxo and partnerships
Plaxo’s growth strategy is heavily
reliant on building on existing third
party API 3s. In the last few months
alone, Plaxo has built integration for
TripIt, new version of OpenID 15,
became an OpenID 15 provider and
continue to support several other API
3
s.
3. Plaxo premium account
For £25.99 users can set-up a
premium account which allows users
to sync Plaxo with Windows Mobile
phones and automate contact book
backup and recovery. It also allows
users 24/7 VIP phone and email-
support.
Summary
Plaxo’s growth has mainly been
driven by its innovative approach to
make users’ address books portable.
Plaxo’s social network is based on
openness of data and provides users
the ability to aggregate data from
various social networks.
 7 tips for building and growing your

Top tips online social network

1. Build APIs3: Allow developers to build applications for your platform.
This doesn’t need to be sophisticated, although the simpler you can make it
the higher uptake you’ll see. The most common way to open up the
platform for developers is by building a APIs3.
2. Build Applications: Apart from opening up your platform, it’s also
worth building applications using others’ APIs 3. Examples in this document
show the rapid adoption of new social networks based on applications built
for platforms.
3. Adopt platform early: To hit critical mass of users quickly, developers
are advised to adopt a new platform ASAP. Examples in this document
show that early adopters on platforms like Facebook saw maximum success
and growth in user numbers.
4. Keep it simple: Make it simple for the user to install your product in
blogs, websites or install the applications on third party platforms. For
instance, embedding a YouTube video to a user’s blog is a basic copy and
paste. The usability is made absolutely simple.
5. Adopt a niche: Define a niche for your product. A good niche like
Flixster i.e. social networks for movies, is easier to sell–in to users.
6. Openness of data: The walled garden approach to data doesn't work,
even Facebook had to let it go. Let users own their data and they will feel
comfortable using your platform.
7. Keep innovation: Innovation is key for development and growth of
social networks. Social networks like Facebook keep innovating to provide
unique user experience and keep the network fresh.

se7en
tips
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
Future key players
1. OpenSocial 7
OpenSocial is a set of API 3s
developed by Google to make it
easier for developers to build
applications for third parties. It is
already available on sites such as
Hi5, MySpace and Ning. As more
sites support OpenSocial, it will
provide a lucrative opportunity for
both application developers and
network owners.

2. Facebook Connect 14
A single sign-on service that competes
with OpenID 15, the service enables
Facebook users to login to affiliated
sites using their Facebook account
and share information from such sites
with their Facebook friends.
Source: Warmnfuzzy
3. Third party integrators
With the volume of social tools like Prediction going forwards
MySpaceId 6, Facebook Connect 14
The future for social media is bright given the shift of major social networks towards
etc its hard for web publishers to keep
openness and users owning their data. The clear winner of the social media marathon will be
track and continue developing their
a company that can influence the most people with its technologies. The OpenID 15 v/s
system. We hence recommend third
Facebook Connect 14 saga shows that users are not only interested in functionality but also
party integrators like Gigya’s
usability.
Socialize. They continue to
aggregates API 3s, like those from
Facebook, MySpace and OpenID 15, Liberate Data
into a single API 3. There will be many influencers in the social networking arena in the following months that
focus on unifying technology across the board. Two potential key players are Google, in
4. Social Graph conjunction with the OpenID 15 community, and Facebook teamed up with Microsoft. Exciting
Social Graph is a the global mapping times are ahead as these companies innovate to liberate user data and move it around. If both
of everybody and how they're solutions are credible, users and websites will happily accept them but will resist to signing up
related. Many organisations are to new websites.
trying to find the most elegant
solution to getting everyone’s social
graph available openly without any
User Identity
restrictions. The current contenders In the coming months the biggest challenge that will be solved will be Identity and the
include: OpenSocial 7, Facebook Social Graph. Users will resist signing up to yet another social network andwill instead want to
Connect 14 and perhaps OpenID 15 use their existing accounts. Once they sign up to a new social network they will want to
coupled with Google Contacts API 3. befriend their existing contacts. Smaller networks, like Plaxo, third party integrators, like
Gigya, and widget suppliers like Clearspring will also play a big role. They will make it easier
for publishers to integrate this technology and grow their social networks.

Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy


Jargon Buster
Please note most of these definitions have
been extracted from Wikipedia.
1. Friendster: is a social networking
website focused on helping people
meet new friends, stay in touch with old
ones and share online content and
media.
2. HTML: is an acronym for HyperText
Jargon Buster Markup Language and is the
predominant markup language for web
pages. It provides a means to describe
the structure of text-based information
in a document.
3. API: is an abbreviation of
application program interface, a set of
routines, protocols, and tools for
building software applications. A good
API makes it easier to develop a
program by providing all the building
blocks.
4. MP3: is a digital audio encoding
format. It is a common audio format for
consumer audio storage.
5. comScore: is an internet marketing
research company providing marketing
data and services to many of the
Internet's largest businesses. comScore
tracks all internet data on its surveyed
computers in order to study online
behaviour.
6. MySpaceID: enables all MySpace
users to be in control of their social
identity wherever they travel online.
7. Open Social: is a set of common
application programming interfaces
(APIs) for web-based social network
applications, developed by Google and
MySpace and a number of other social
networks.
8. Compete: is a United States web
traffic analysis service that publishes
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
the approximate number of U.S. visitors
for any website.
9. FBML: is a variant-evolved subset
of HTML 2 with some elements
removed. It allows Facebook
Application developers to customise the
look and feel of their applications, to a
limited extent.
10. The Internet Movie Database
(IMDB): is an online database of
information related to movies, actors,
television shows, production crew
personnel, video games, and most
recently, fictional characters featured in
visual entertainment media.
11. Micro-blogging: is a form of
multimedia blogging that allows users
to send brief text updates or
micromedia such as photos or audio
clips and publish them, either to be
viewed by anyone or by a restricted
group which can be chosen by the user.
12. Mac OS X: is a line of computer
operating systems developed,
marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and
since 2002 has been included with all
new Macintosh computer systems.
13. Napster: was an online music file
sharing service. Its technology allowed
people to easily copy and distribute
MP3 4 files among each other. Now,
Napster provides legal downloads to
users through a store similar to iTunes.
14. Facebook Connect: A single sign-on
service that competes with OpenID3,
the service enables Facebook users to
login to affiliated sites using their
Facebook account and share
information from such sites with their
Facebook friends.
15. OpenID: is an open, decentralized
standard for user authentication and
access control, allowing users to log
onto many services with the same
digital identity.
Source: Jazzmasterson
Henderson
Kite.
understand // implement // adapt to Digital

Can we help?
Raj Anand
Digital Consultancy
Concept and Writer
Henderson Kite is a strategic media
Raj was recently awarded as one of
consultancy that helps organisations adapt
the 50 most influential people in
and grow within the digital media economy.
Digital alongside the founders of
Spotify and Twitter. He is the winner
We work with our clients to help them
of Europe's Young Entrepreneur 2007
develop their understanding, planning and
revenue achieved from digital platforms. This
could involve running strategy workshops
demystifying the market through to review
and redeveloping internal processes to
developing new applications and products.

At the heart of our offering is the desire

to directly involve the client so that
understanding, passion and skills are
transferred across to the business. From
experience this ensures that real change
happens and companies are able to adapt
and meet the challenges and opportunities  
thrown up by the digital media market.
Raj Anand
Henderson Kite
42 Circus Street
London SE10 8SN
raj.anand@hendersonkite.com
T +44 (0) 208 1333 676
by BusinessWeek, Courvoisier/ The
Observer Future 500 (2008) and
Finalist of Sussex Entrepreneur 2008.
Raj worked for the European Union,
in Shell STEP internships and
developed software projects for local
Brighton based businesses and Sussex
University research laboratory. Raj
won many national awards for
projects in computer science,
leadership skills and his
entrepreneurial ambitions; including
the Millennium Volunteer award for
helping local charities with Web
projects, President of the best Society
at Sussex University Union and
runner up at South East Shell STEP
awards.

ON TWITTER | BLOG

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What we do at Midnight ?
Who are we?
Midnight is an authentic multiplatform
media consultancy using a suite of
communication techniques to ensure your
story reaches the right people - on paper,
online and on air.
We're at home in both the digital and
analogue worlds and our people are skilled
in harnessing new technology platforms to
reach and influence increasingly
sophisticated and extensively networked
audiences.   companies including search
Digital Media: We were the first UK PR
company to specialise in this area and we
remain at the cutting edge.
Exhibitions: We have handled PR for over
40 exhibitions, both trade and public.
Awards: We provide consultancy on
managing and promoting award schemes of
every type.
Audience engagement
The diversity of our client portfolio -
from consumer brands to technology
companies - helps us bring fresh perspectives
to every engagement.
Our campaigns are proactive, reactive
and - above all - interactive, combining
techniques from across the marketing
spectrum to deliver results our clients can
measure.
At Midnight we have a refreshing, will-
do attitude to client service which we
underpin with a pragmatic, professional
approach. Our clients appreciate our
attention to detail and at the same time they
tell us we're good at seeing the big picture.
We never let an established strategy get in
the way of a great idea.
The Team
Midnight's team of expert PR
consultants design creative, proactive and
reactive PR campaigns that underpin clients'
business goals. We take the time to get to
know clients' brands and industries, allowing
us to communicate complex business and
technology stories in simple and
understandable language.
We have been working in the internet
sector for over 14 years, devising and
implementing successful PR campaigns for
both challenger and established brands.
Midnight understands the rules of social
media engagement, resulting in award
winning campaigns and tangible client
success. We think and act three-
dimensionally, identifying influential
networks that brands should be engaged in
and connecting with them both on and
offline.
MIDNIGHT COMMUNICATIONS
28 FOUNDRY STREET
BRIGHTON
EAST SUSSEX
BN1 4AT
TEL: 01273 666 200
FAX: 01273 686 094
Digital Consultancy - Media Consultancy
Louise Greeves
Head of technology,
media and telecoms
A strong communicator, Louise
Greeves has in-depth understanding
of business and media strategy. She is
adept at implementing national and
international PR campaigns with client
experience spanning major
technology leaders, from AOL's
Platform-A to Intel, to smaller
marketing company DBD Media and
viral marketing distributor, Unruly
Media.
Her excellent management skills and
thirst for everything digital have seen
Louise awarded Best Young
Communicator at both the CIPR and
Fresh Awards.
Nina Howse
Consultant
Nina is a social and digital
media enthusiast with experience
spanning leading online clients. A
tenacious communicator, she has built
solid relationships with a range of
media contacts in the national and
trade media, securing extensive
positive coverage for clients in their
tier one media.
Her client portfolio includes
search engine optimisation DBD
Media, the market leading web
analytics provider, Coremetrics and
niche online social network,
Neighbo.com. Nina also works
across consumer and events accounts,
developing digital media strategies
for shows such as the London
International Music Show and the
Caravan and Motorhome Show.