Social Networks

Fynanz and GreenNote might be the first P2P banks to really work

Jose A. del Moral — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:50:41 +0000

As far as I know, all P2P banks are having a hard time to get transactions finished. There is a lot of interest on their activities, but it is mainly buzz. Volume is not so high. But this could change with Fynanz and GreenNote. I really like their student to student type of system.

So these are another P2P banks, as Prosper or Spain’s Comunitae. But this time they only work with university students who need loans. When you lend money to a student, it’s not only because you want to get it back with a surplus, but also because you want to help him.

This is not only a credit score transaction, as there is also an evaluation of each student borrower, which includes his/her grades and the school he is attending. Wouldn’t you lend money to a future Harvard graduate? And anyway, who does not want to help a student.

Spanish social network Tuenti critizes Facebook for avoiding the European privacy regulation

Jose A. del Moral — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:48:02 +0000

At a conference in Madrid, Natalia Martos, chief law officer at Spanish social network Tuenti, criticized Facebook for avoiding the European privacy regulation. She asked Facebook to be honest in this respect and not hide in Mountain View, while it’s making business with Spanish users.

Spanish lawyer Paloma Llaneza, who was at the same round table, had even a stronger point and accused Facebook of opening a non-operational office in Madrid so that it could avoid local privacy regulation. European privacy laws are quite strict, which means that Euro social networks need to invest more money in order to avoid fines from national data agencies.

Besides, when a user has some type of problem with Facebook, going to court in the US is so expensive that nobody goes all the way. On the contrary, Tuenti is a company registered in Spain, which makes it much easier for any Spanish national to take it to court.

Recently Tuenti had to throw away some users who were not able to show they were older than 14. Converting private profiles into public information, as Facebook did two months ago, would also not be legal according to Spanish regulation. Llaneza even asked Spanish authorities to forbid access to any foreign social network from Spanish territory.

To close or not to close

Jose A. del Moral — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:06:12 +0000

Twitter used to be an open network and Facebook used to be a close one. Not any more. Facebook is opening itself up. Why? Revenue generation thru Google based visitors has a lot to do with this change. The Freemium model (charging users for some extra services) does not work so far and Facebook users don’t click on ads as much as non users do.

According to The Economist, social networks have benefited from search engines’ desire to get their hands on more content. So Bing and Google have signed deals with Twitter in order to integrate tweets on their search results. This is the only reason that could explain that Twitter made some profits last year, something that has been rumoured.

This is also why Facebook is changing its privacy rules in order to be able to place some ot its users’ contents in external sites. Facebook is not making profits so far and it is having a hard time to do so, though it is already the world’s second largest site. Making revenues from search engines would be one of the best options.

Tuenti gets into the TechCrunch Europe Top 100

Jose A. del Moral — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:52:46 +0000

Spanish social network Tuenti has gotten into the TechCrunch Europe Top 100, with 86 points and the 5th position. The reasons for this sudden interest towards the Spanish company are, according to TechCrunch, that it has 20 billion pageviews and that it can be considered “the Facebook of Spain”.

Another half-Spanish company in this top is eRepublik, which is also based in Romania. It is a social strategy game founded in 2007 and backed by a fund and several angels, who invested €2.75 million. Nestoria, which is based in London but has Spanish entrepreneurs, is leaving the top.

87% of Spanish net users know Facebook

Jose A. del Moral — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:22:23 +0000

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has asked 503 net users on social networks. Results are quite interesting: 87% of interviewed people say they know Facebook. It goes all the way to 97% when the name of the network is suggested.

These are the results:

1. Facebook: 87%
2. Tuenti: 62%
3. Hi5: 23%
4. Twitter & MySpace: 17%
5. Badoo: 14%
6. Fotolog: 6%
7. Sonico: 6%
8. Netlog: 4%
9. Orkut: 3%
10. Xing & Linkedin: 2%

Copains d’Avant is the top social network in France

Jose A. del Moral — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:20:23 +0000

Not Facebook nor Skyrock. The main social network in France in terms of user accounts is Copains d’Avant, which gets together former school and university students. This is at least what shows a study by Ifop, a research company that has interviewed 1,000 people.

These are the top social networks in France:
1. Copains d’Avant: 49% of French Internet users do have an account in this network.
2. Windows Live Messenger: 46%
3. Facebook: 37%
4. Trombi: 19%
5. MySpace, Skyrock, Viadeo: 8%
8. Hi5, Twitter: 5%

Twitter is a very interesting case. Few people do have an account but it has grown a lot in terms of public knowledge (notoriété): from 28% in Spring 2009 to 63% in Autumn 2009. Also to note that Facebook is pretty much known by everybody in France, even net users older thatn 65 do know it.

Is Government 2.0 overhyped?

Jose A. del Moral — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:25:38 +0000

More and more people are thinking that Government 2.0 is a hype which won’t last so much. It’s not any more about hackers developing tools to get some data from official sites, as more an more governments put open data and e-participation initiatives in their agenda.

Even if it is overhyped (which it partly is), I think this movement will stay here for ever. For these reasons:

- Obama’s administration changes have been a driver for other governments to take action. So the hype is related to the sucess of Obama in Washington, but the reforms will be there once he leaves the White House.

- Democratic Government should be about crowdsourcing people’s thoughts. So Web 2.0 tools are just great for this goal. Collaborative tools are also becoming important inside companies, so they will also become more and more used inside public institutions. And not only for open innovation.

- Transparency is a need in democracy. Historically it was only posible with the help of the press, but this is not the way it works any more. Any citizen can become a media nowadays, so he/she can also make the Government more transparent and so, accountable.

- Open data will probably create some doubts at the beginning, as in Europe there are not so many developers wishing to create mashups. But at the end companies will start using this data, specially the one that has commercial use and which has a cost nowadays. Local data will be the most relevant.

- As David Osimo explains, Government 2.0 is not so much “about representativeness” as about “relevance”.

If you have more than 20 friends on Facebook, you could be in trouble in Europe

Jose A. del Moral — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:42:11 +0000

Beware of what you do on Facebook if you have more than 20 friends. According to Spanish Data Protection Agency, 20 is the limit between private and public stuff. So if you have more friends you can not share whatever with them. And this applies to any EU country, as the data protection regulation is the same Europe-wide.

This is what the director of the Data Protection Agency says:
- If you upload a picture to your profile, you should ask permission of anybody who is the photo, as pictures are considered personal data, subject to this regulation.
- You are not supposed to register your personal social network in any public registry (there is such a registry in Spain for all commercial data bases).
- This works on any social network, and not just on Facebook. If you have a public profile, it does not matter if you have less than 20 friends.

Basque police arrests a guy who was identified on a social network

Jose A. del Moral — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:58:31 +0000

The Basque Police (Ertzaintza) has arrested a guy who was identified on a social network. According to the press release, the 13 year-old victims saw one of the three attackers on a social network and immediately told the Police. They had been robbed some money and their mobile phones, after being threatened with a a knife.

Spanish bank Sabadell will crowdsource its employees’ ideas

Jose A. del Moral — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:08:24 +0000

Spanish bank Banco Sabadell has launched an online tool, BS Idea, so that its employees can crowdsource their ideas. The question is now if people will actually use it. They think so and show some data from the first 15 days: 4,000 new users (the company has around 9,500 employees) have created 1,600 new ideas.

Of course quality is very important, as well as the number of people voting. No data has been disclosed on this respect, as it is probably too early to know if it is a lot or not. Some votes are probably just trials, with no real value. I will ask them in two months, together with the number of ideas which are finally applied by the company, as this is a very important way to measure the success rate.

As of the carrots that Banco Sabadell is using in order to boost the use of the new tool, this is what ideas4all, the people who power it, told me:
- People can vote on their colleague’s ideas, which creates a sense of competition.
- People can suggest new ideas without censorship. Apparently, somebody in the company classifies the ideas in 5 levels and 17 categories, deppending on how they can be used internally.
- People use the corporate intranet, so they don’t need to use a new login system.
- There is an electronic newsletter in which the best ideas are shared, together with some info on the ones that have been selected.
- Special requests for participation will be addressed by the company periodically so that employees increase the use of the tool related to a certain concern in the bank.
- They assume they can not get everybody taking part, but what they want in a short term is to have a group of heavy users (5 to 10% of employees)