MaxxoMedia Digital Media and Entertainment Trends

Via Mashable

David A. Yovanno is the CEO of Gigya, Inc., a leading social optimization platform for online business. He can be found on Twitter at @daveyovanno or e-mail dave(at)gigya(dot)com.

Now that most social networks are supporting functionality on third party sites — via Facebook Connect, Sign in with Twitter, Yahoo! Open Strategy, MySpaceID, and other similar technologies — entertainment companies are experimenting with a variety of approaches.

While movie promotions on Facebook, top sports moments on YouTube, and MySpace music pages remain key fixtures, many entertainment companies are also now actively focused on how to apply social strategies to their own sites to deepen relationships with fans and become more relevant. Here are four ways on-site social features are benefiting both fans and the entertainment industry today.

Social networking has risen among all age groups in the past few years, particularly among teens and younger adults. 73% of online teens used social networking sites in 2009, compared to 47% of online adults. Breaking down online adults into older and younger demographics, 72% of adults 18-29 use social networking sites, compared to 40% of their counterparts 30 and older, according to research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Social networking adults in all age brackets favor Facebook by a wide margin, with older adults preferring it slightly more. Seventy-three percent of all adults 18 and older who use social networking sites have a Facebook account. Broken down by age demographic, this includes 71% of adults 18-29 and 75% of adults 30 and older.

From Kenradio.com

A growing number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide are taking online social networking to the streets. The U.K. leads Europe in mobile social networking on a percentage basis — with the U.S. boasting comparable numbers. In the U.K., approximately 810,000 mobile subscribers, or 1.7% of all mobile subscribers in the country, visited social networking websites on their mobile phones in the first quarter of 2008. That reach percentage was twice as high as it was in other major European markets?though similar to the U.S., where 1.6% of all mobile subscribers (4.1 million in all) accessed social networks via their phones in December 2007.

Bob Bickel, founder of Ringside Networks,  has written an article digging into the behind the scenes struggles between Google and Facebook over  Google’s Friend Connect service.  Facebook has been willing to share with other network’s integrated applications but told Google to talk to the hand.  Social Networking sites have yet to achieve the revenue levels that they so desperately need to maintain their services in the long run.  Which path is correct? open sharing or isolationism?

By Bob Bickel

Facebook came out swinging yesterday to defend their users and their turf. http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=111. They have basically shut down Google’s use of their API to collect user profile and social graph information on the new Friend Connect service. Here’s my take on the background and what is going on…

Google has made a nice business out of an open Internet. Facebook carved out a nice little corner of the Internet with a social network that does not give Google the type of visibility they would like into that little corner. In addition, that little corner looks like it might be kind of valuable. Google makes a few moves like buying Orkut and amassing all the other social networking vendors and creating Open Social. Those things are OK, but not really opening up that corner that Google now has become to covet.

Well, the world of social network walled gardens kind of exploded last week. MySpace, Facebook and Google all seemed to rush announcements to market without full thought, without proper collaboration and certainly a bit hastily.