John Ryan

My original post in late June was based on two weeks of using Ulitzer and Ning.  I've added additional thoughts after two months of use. The obvious point for me is that the sites have two different objectives for the writers.  For Ning, the writer is trying to be involved in a niche social network from scratch.  For example, I have built my own social network for marketers and salespeople called BuyerSteps.  I created BuyerSteps as a way for other professionals to join in a conversation around the 21st century buyer.  So, Ning represents a way to build a community. In the case of Ulitzer, as a writer I am focused on getting readers from within an existing audience.  There are already thousands of readers coming to the Ulitzer site, so if they are interested in my topics such as marketing, they will find my articles as well as others.  Ulitzer allows the writer the ... (more)

An A to Z of the Social Media Landscape: H to P

This is part 2 of 3 of a continuing series on Social Media Companies. You can go to Part 1 here. As with the A-G list, if you see any problems with the data or you believe a company should be on this list, please let me know. john@buyersteps.com H Hi5 +Social Glue Award Launched in 2003, hi5 is now one of the world's largest social networks and a top 20 website globally — with over 60 million monthly unique visitors. Compete reports 3.2 million U.S. unique visitors every month. Quantcast reports 49.9 million worldwide visitors, high indexes for male, 12-34, Hispanic and Asian, has ... (more)

Some Surprising Usage Facts About Twitter

Like all new markets or applications, Twitter has early adopters to be followed by the early majority and late majority of the market.  This is not guaranteed, so it will be interesting to see if Twitter can break out of the current usage patterns.  I thought this was compelling data. From Sysomos - Over the past few months, Twitter has experienced explosive growth, attracting celebrity users such as Oprah, and a growing mountain of media and blog coverage. Sysomos Inc., one of the world's leading social media analytics companies, conducted an extensive study to document Twitter... (more)

An A to Z of the Social Media Landscape: Q to Z

Part three of this popular series looks at Reddit, Reunion (MyLife.com), ShareThis, StumbleUpon, Tagged, Technorati, Tribe, Twitter, Urbanchat, Viddler, Wangyou, Wikipedia, Xanga, Xiaonei, Xing, Yelp, YouTube and Yuku. This is part 3 of 3 of a continuing series on Social Media Companies. You can go to Part 1 and Part 2. As with all parts of the list, if you see any problems with the data or you believe a company should be on this list, please let me know. john@buyersteps.com I hope you have enjoyed these lists and in a few months, I may update based on new compelling data. This is ... (more)

Micro-Blogging in the Enterprise

Over the next few months I hope to interview carefully chosen executives who I believe will have an impact on how companies optimize revenue. I was lucky enough to come across Socialcast, a young company based in San Francisco, California. I thought Tim Young to be patient, thoughtful and very tuned in to the topics of the day. He certainly has the disposition to be a visionary in this space. Here are the questions I posed to Tim and his answers. If I were an analyst at a major research firm, what category would I place Socialcast? Enterprise Social Messaging What’s the so what of ... (more)