TechCrunch reports on the Top Social Media Sites of 2008 from a report by Com­Score. Excerpt:

What were the top social media sites of 2008? Com­Score came out with
its world­wide traf­fic stats for Novem­ber a few days ago (so these don’t include Decem­ber). They are a mix of social net­works and blog­ging plat­forms. Blog­ger … still rules the roost with an esti­mated 222 mil­lion unique world­wide vis­i­tors in Novem­ber (up 44 per­cent from Novem­ber, 2007). Face­book … is on pace to pass it soon with 200 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors (up 116 per­cent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 mil­lion active users Face­book itself reports—go fig­ure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 mil­lion uniques. Word­press is a close fourth and gain­ing with 114 mil­lion (up 68 per­cent). And Win­dows Live Spaces is down 22 per­cent to 87 mil­lion uniques.

Com­Score keeps a list of what it calls “social net­work­ing” sites, but these include blog­ging plat­forms and other social media sites as well. While the audi­ence for blogs is still show­ing healthy growth over­all, Face­book stands out as the social gorilla tak­ing share from not only other social net­works but blogs and other social media as well.

Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social net­work­ing list. It is really more of a social media site list, which is what I’m renam­ing it for this post. It is not defin­i­tive, but it gives a good lay of the land. (Here is a sim­i­lar rank­ing from 2007). …

Top Social Media Sites

1. Blog­ger (222 million)
2. Face­book (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. Word­press (114 million)
5. Win­dows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geoc­i­ties (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friend­ster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million)
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tri­pod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Net­log (21 million)

(ranked by unique world­wide vis­i­tors Novem­ber 2008; comScore)

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David Finch at Social Media Explorer: My Top 5 Social Media Tools of 2008 — three of them are Twit­ter apps.

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SearchViews: The Year in Search and Social Media: Pre­dic­tions 2009.

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A lit­tle while ago I asked my Twit­ter friends in an instant-tweet poll which new logo they liked best for this site and received 20 votes within a few min­utes. (Have a pref­er­ence? Bet­ter vote fast!) And obvi­ously, these designs are copy­righted and can’t be repub­lished elsewhere.

Later: Here are the results of my insta-tweet poll:

Logo #3: 17 1/2

Logo #2: 7 1/2

Logo #4: 5

Logo #1: 2

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Orli Yakuel whipped up this coo­lio 4-minute Ani­moto video run­ning down high­lights of the Web in 2008.

Dan Schaw­bel at Mash­able: Top 10 Rep­u­ta­tion Track­ing Tools Worth Pay­ing For.

Medi­a­Post: Social Media Wins In Mar­keters’ ’09 Plans. Excerpt:

56% of mar­ket­ing and pub­lish­ing decision-makers plan to increase their con­tent mar­ket­ing spend­ing next year, Junta42 found after sur­vey­ing its com­mu­nity of cor­po­rate mar­keters and publishing/agency professionals.

What’s more, a full 31% expressed their inten­tion to increase spend­ing on con­tent sig­nif­i­cantly, while 25% said they planned to increase it slightly. …

Alex Cas­tro at Mash­able: Peer­ing into 2009: 10 Pre­dic­tions for Online Video.

TechCrunch: YouTube Looks Back At A Year In Video; Hulu Brings in 2009 Live From New York.

Web 2.0 case study on Barack Obama’s use of social media.

SearchEngineWatch: Will Social Net­works Become the New Inbox? Part 1 and Part 2.

Social Media Today: 7 Social Media & Web Ana­lyt­ics Pre­dic­tions for 2009.

David Armano: 10 Rea­sons Obama Should Con­tinue On Twitter.

Todd Defren at PR Squared: Answer­ing the Chal­lenges of Social Media Adoption.

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Social media roundup:

• Social Media Influ­encers Pre­dic­tions 2009 By Trendsspot­ting on SlideShare (view small or full screen).

• Influ­encers On Mobile 2009 & 2020 Pre­dic­tions By Trendsspotting

• Tracyphaup.com: Top 20 Social Net­work­ing Sites.

• Richard Mac­Manus at Read­WriteWeb lists the Top 100 Prod­ucts of 2008.

• You can now cre­ate video cards with Skype to send your own video greet­ings on Facebook.

• Read­WriteWeb: Top 10 Alter­na­tive Search Engines of 2008. Excerpt:

ChaCha, as a search tool, is human-powered, gen­eral, and mobile. There is no web­site, no search box, and no page witih a list of ten links. To use ChaCha, sim­ply call 1–800-2ChaCha (1–800-224‑2242) in the US, or send a text to 242242. When you call, leave your query just as you would any other voice-mail mes­sage, and hang up. Within 2 to 5 min­utes, a human guide will have researched and texted you the answer. I used ChaCha with only my cheap cell phone when I was lost in New York City at mid­night. And that’s an impor­tant point: you can call ChaCha at any time with any ques­tion for any rea­son on any phone — as long as that phone can receive text mes­sages. And, aside from your carrier’s incom­ing text fees, ChaCha is free.

I get that ChaCha is mak­ing a play for mobile search, but I don’t get why I can’t send them a much more pre­cise and accu­rate email or instant mes­sage instead of hav­ing to leave a voicemail.

• Peter Kim’s PDF roundup of social media influ­encers’ pre­dic­tions for 2009 is also avail­able on SlideShare.

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I’m at a loss for words for the tram­pling of our con­sti­tu­tional rights in recent years. So I’ll repost a few para­graphs from an entry by Thomas Hawk ear­lier today: Long Beach Har­bor Patrol Says Pho­tog­ra­phy “Not Allowed” From Pub­lic Sidewalk.

I just got back from shoot­ing for a week in Los Ange­les and have to say that the high­light of my trip was shoot­ing indus­trial stuff down in Long Beach Har­bor with Pho­tog­ra­pher David Som­mars. David is an amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­pher who reg­u­larly shoots indus­trial stuff around L.A. and he shared with me some of the most fan­tas­tic van­tage points to shoot this sort of pho­tog­ra­phy in Long Beach. David also main­tains a pho­tog­ra­phy related blog here.

Unfor­tu­nately our pho­towalk around the Port of Long Beach was not with­out inci­dent. Three times we were blinted while pho­tograph­ing. I’ve been stopped plenty of times while legally shoot­ing in the past. Most of the times I’ve been able to be respect­ful but insis­tent on my legal rights to shoot wher­ever I’m shoot­ing. Every so often though an inci­dent turns into a more seri­ous altercation.

The first two times Som­mars and I were stopped we were stopped by pri­vate secu­rity agents work­ing for Secu­ri­tas on behalf of BP’s Car­son Refin­ery. … The has­sle from BP’s agents though didn’t really bother me all that much. We were insis­tent on our rights to shoot the facil­ity and they seemed to under­stand that in the end there was noth­ing that they could do about it. Their secu­rity guard snapped pho­tos of both of us with his cam­era phone (and I returned the favor of course) and then they fol­lowed us when we left in my car in order to get my license plate, but they seemed to pretty clearly under­stand that while they were free to ask us not to shoot the plant, it was clearly within our rights to do so.

The more dis­turb­ing inci­dent came later when we were atop a bridge, again on a pub­lic side­walk, shoot­ing another plant and long expo­sure bridge shots. Here we were stopped by real cops this time, rather than secu­rity guards. The cops in ques­tion were from the Long Beach Har­bor Patrol. Their offi­cer explained to us that it was his job to mon­i­tor the side of the bridge that we were on while L.A.P.D. had juris­dic­tion over the other side of the bridge.

Basi­cally the con­ver­sa­tion went some­thing like this.

Long Beach Har­bor Patrol Offi­cer: “I’m going to have to ask you guys to leave.“

Us: “But, why, were sim­ply tak­ing art pho­tographs.“

Long Beach Har­bor Patrol Offi­cer: “You’re not allowed to pho­to­graph these plants.“

Us: “But we’re on a pub­lic side­walk. What law doesn’t allow us to pho­to­graph here?“

Long Beach Har­bor Patrol Offi­cer: “You’ll need to come back tomor­row and get a per­mit if you want to shoot in the Har­bor.“

Me: “I’m only down in Long Beach for tonight and won’t be able to do that.“

2nd Long Beach Har­bor Patrol Offi­cer (shrug­ging her shoul­ders): Oh, well, you’re just going to have to leave. Pho­tog­ra­phy is not allowed here with­out a per­mit.“

Dur­ing this alter­ca­tion both David and I were asked to present iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to the police. They used our IDs to run back­ground checks on both of us. …

David told me that he’s been stopped about 10 times in the last six months while shoot­ing in Long Beach Har­bor. About half of those stops involved actual police in addi­tion to secu­rity guards. On one occa­sion the cops actu­ally hand­cuffed him and in another inci­dent 4 police cars and a black SUV con­verged on him. He’s also had FBI agents call on him over his pho­tog­ra­phy. Per­son­ally I think it’s wrong to hand­cuff peace­ful pho­tog­ra­phers for the “crime” of pho­tog­ra­phy while ques­tion­ing and detaining. …

What I am tired of though is the harass­ment that pho­tog­ra­phers face on a reg­u­lar basis while out doc­u­ment­ing our world. Pho­tog­ra­phy is not a crime. 911 didn’t sud­denly mag­i­cally turn pho­tog­ra­phers into crim­i­nals. And as long as pho­tog­ra­phy is not a crime, I think that cops, secu­rity guards and other author­ity fig­ures should be required to live within the legal sys­tem as it now stands. Maybe some day they will pass a law that shoot­ing Long Beach Har­bor is in fact a crime. Or maybe they’ll actu­ally pass a law that per­mits *are* actu­ally required to shoot there. But until that day hap­pens (and I’d be one vocally oppos­ing any such rule like that) this sort of harass­ment ought not take place. And it’s unfor­tu­nate when it does.

Digg this here.

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Chris Heuer, founder of the Social Media Club, talks about our new ven­ture, AdHoc­nium, in this new install­ment of BuzzLogic’s the Vino Diaries. AdHoc­nium is a col­lec­tive or net­work of mar­ket­ing agen­cies and “una­gen­cies” offer­ing social media solu­tions to businesses. 

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David Mur­ray of the Biv­ings Group passes this along: The Biv­ings Group just com­pleted a study that looks at how top news­pa­pers are expand­ing their web  pro­grams in response to declin­ing print cir­cu­la­tion. Some highlights:

• 58% of news­pa­per sites now accept some form of user gen­er­ated content
• 75% now allow com­ments on arti­cles, com­pared to 33% in 2007
• Only 11% of news­pa­pers now require reg­is­tra­tion to view con­tent, com­pared to
• 29% last year
• All news­pa­pers fea­ture some form of con­tex­tual adver­tis­ing and 42% accept inter­sti­tial ads.

You can view the full study here.
 

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Lip Dub — Flag­pole Sitta by Har­vey Dan­ger from aman­da­lyn­ferri on Vimeo.

In Shan­non Paul’s post about how to build an online pres­ence, I just caught this 2-year-old video on Vimeo that’s at once funny and smart — a rare com­bi­na­tion. If you haven’t seen it before, check it out. Here’s the con­text. I also just sub­scribed to Amanda’s videos; she’s done much more than I have on Vimeo so far.

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