Entertainment media company BUZZMEDIA (formerly known as Buzznet) has just announced the addition of 6 music sites to its ever-growing list of properties, namely PureVolume, PopMatters, Gorilla vs. Bear, The Hype Machine, Concrete Loop and RCRD LBL.
The news was just released, but it looks like industry blog Hypebot.com jumped the gun, deeming the addition of the 6 sites an outright acquisition of the lot.
After contacting BUZZMEDIA we’ve learned that in reality, the deals with The Hypemachine, RCRD LBL and PopMatters are advertising partnerships while the others are straight-up purchases. All sites will retain editorial control, we were also told. → Read More
Buzznet, a social network based around people’s interests (i.e. music, art, fashion, photography, movies, television, celebrities), is relaunching today with a more social layer on the platform. Buzznet, which is a property of pop culture media conglomerate BuzzMedia, allows users to share, curate and socialize content based on their personal interests.
On the site now, users will be able create a custom content feed when they follow other users or follow communities around topics that appear on other contributors’ blogs. The ability to follow a user means tapping into their own content and sharing channel on Buzznet. Users will then see updates in a news feeds from the people they follow on their homepage and in the footer that follows them around the site. Users with the most followers will be trending under “most followed” on the Buzznet homepage. → Read More
A year ago we modeled out the true value of various social networks based on the idea that users in high-value online advertising markets like Japan, the UK and the U.S. were worth more (financially speaking) than those in lower value online advertising markets. Facebook had recently become the largest worldwide social network in terms of users, but based on our model MySpace was still by far the most valuable social network.
We’ve now remodeled social network valuations based on current user numbers and Facebook’s most recent $10 billion valuation. The results are dramatically different.
Based on the original year-old model, if Facebook was worth $15 billion (their then-current valuation), MySpace, with far more U.S. users, was worth nearly $20 billion:
Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We’ve graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. We’ve then calculated the average advertising spend (estimated by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in a recent report) for each person online in each of those countries. For example, in the U.S., the total 2008 estimated Internet advertising spend is $25.2 billion. We’ve divided that by the number of people online in the U.S. according to Comscore (191 million), to get an average Internet spend per person of $132. View the raw data and calculations here.
The U.S., by the way, is only the 4th most valuable market per Internet user, trailing The UK ($213), Australia ($148) and Denmark ($144).
Is MySpace worth $3 billion, or $20 billion? It depends on how you value a user. It’s time to start comparing the big global social networks on something other than unique visitors and page views. I believe an effective way to value a particular user is based on the average Internet advertising spend per person in the country they live in. The higher the spend, the more value the social network can get out of the user by serving them advertising and other products. That means that, for now, users in a handful of key countries are worth far more in terms of revenue potential than those in the rest of the world. We’ve begun to build out a model that looks at social network usage by country/region and compares that to available data on total Internet advertising spend in each of those countries. The model is then able to turn an apples-to-oranges comparison into an apples-to-apples comparison. The early results are surprising. The ultimate financial value of any asset is, ultimately, what the market will pay for it. We have only a few data points to help us: Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn are worth $15 billion, $850 million and $1 billion, respectively, based on relatively recent valuations (although only Bebo was actually sold completely; Facebook and LinkedIn raised investments at those valuations). The last valuation of MySpace was just $580 million, back in 2005 when it was acquired by News Corp. Which valuation is most “correct?” It’s hard to say based on the data that’s been available to date, which is mostly just aggregate page view and unique visitor numbers from Comscore and other services. Based on worldwide unique visitors, for example, Facebook recently overtook MySpace to become the “largest” social network. According to raw worldwide user number, the biggest social networks are Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo, in that order. But when you apply the model that we’ve created below, which takes into account where users live, the rankings change substantially. MySpace is by far the most valuable social network based on available data. A competitor like Orkut is worth only 1/20th of MySpace, even though it has nearly 1/4 the number of users. Properly Ranking Social Networks Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We’ve graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. → Read More
Did you know that Imeem is the fastest-growing social site in the U.S (up 1,590 percent in monthly uniques). And that AIM Pages is growing slightly faster than Digg (345 percent growth versus 323 percent)? Well, at least according to comScore. I asked comScore to do a ranking of social sites in the U.S. and then I reordered the list by growth rate. Here it is: Here are my takeaways. MySpace is still growing at a healthy 23 percent, despite its size. But Facebook is coming on fast, with 129 percent growth. Notice also the strong showing by Bebo (growing 83 percent) versus the lackluster U.S. growth of Hi5 (3 percent) and the decline of Xanga (negative 55 percent). In blogging platforms, Blogger is beating Six Apart on both absolute numbers (32 million visitors versus 13 million) and growth (55 percent versus 44 percent). In the doldrums territory, you’ve got Windows Live Spaces (with a one percent decline) and Yahoo Groups (four percent decline). And in the you-ought-to-seriously-think-of-shutting-this-down territory, there is Lycos Tripod (23 percent decline), MSN Groups (36 percent decline), and Yahoo 360 (’nuff said). Here is a more comprehensive list of social sites ranked by total number of visitors. It includes sites where comScore could not calculate a growth rate because it did not have enough data for September, 2006. Some sites that stand out on this list, having come out of nowhere in the past year, include WordPress.com (with 11.9 million monthly visitors), Freewebs (with 6.6 million), BuzzNet (with 4.4 million),and Kaboodle (with 2.5 million). (Update: Also, you will notice that Google’s social networking site Orkut isn’t even on the list. That is because while it had 24.6 million visitors worldwide in September, 2007, Orkut only attracted 503,000 visitors in the U.S.). CrunchBase Information Imeem Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Music focused social networking destination Buzznet, a service that we noted May 24 as being the biggest social network many may never have heard of, is taking their message and brand on the road. Buzznet has hired 21 year-old blogger Audrey Kitching, “a fashion trendsetter, model and e-scene queen” as a traveling reporter to cover the 9 week, 45 city Vans Warped Tour 2007. Kitching will send video and written dispatches that will include backstage interviews with bands and live discussions with the fans. Kitching will be traveling in a custom Buzznet PT cruiser (see photo), giving Buzznet exposure to millions of music fans and fellow highway travelers; although I’d note looking at the car that it may also blind fellow highway travelers as well. It’s a clever idea in an age where social networking sites are a dime-a-dozen. Being there no longer cuts through, being seen is the key for any startup. I’m told that Kitching will be free to report events as she sees them, so this isn’t a case of Wal-mart style astroturfing. Although some will not be in the target demographic for this style of promotion, it’s not hard to appreciate this as being a smart marketing move by Buzznet. Kitching’s travels can be followed on Buzznet here. Previous TechCrunch Buzznet coverage here. → Read More
Company: BuzzNet Founded: March 2003 Location: Buzznet, Inc. 2404 Wilshire Blvd. #11b Los Angeles, CA 90057 (213) 252-8999 phone (213) 252-8955 fax What is it? BuzzNet is a photo-sharing community. It’s hard to talk about BuzzNet without comparing and contrasting it to Flickr. It shares most or all of Flickr’s strengths, and has a few additional features as well. It’s these additional features that make it better, in my opinion, both for casual and/or “mobile” users as well as serious photographers looking for a way to share their work. I’ll explain why below. First, the basics. You can check out a quick tour here that shows how it all works. Sign up for a free BuzzNet account and you can upload photos directly to their website, or email photos with a unique email address that contains a keyword you choose. This allows for easy mobile photoblogging – just snap a picture with your phone and have it up on your photoblog in seconds. Pictures can be tagged (they call it “buzzwords”) by you and anyone else (Flickr only allows tagging by you and your friends). Users can search/browse by these tags, and they are indexed at Technorati as well and thumbnails are shown for technorati searches for those tags. See, for instance, a technorati tag search on “Seattle” and check out the BuzzNet and Flickr photos on the right. Every user has a unique URL for their pictures, comments and profile information. You can see the Techcrunch photoblog at techcrunch.buzznet.com. For infinitely cooler photoblogs, check out some of the featured ones on the home page. For example, a guy named Adam Richman, who recorded an album in his parents’ basement in Pennsylvania, is photoblogging while on tour. Link Uploading pictures is easy, and here’s the part that I like better than Flickr: Instead of limiting the amount of upload capacity (20 megs per month at Flickr), BuzzNet only limits the number of total photos you can upload per month (just increased from 60 to 120 on the free account). Why is this important? Here’s why – With Flickr I have to take time to resize photos so that I don’t immediately use up my monthly allotment with just ten 2 mb pictures. At BuzzNet, I just send in the big file and they resize for me. And a little known fact (told to me by Marc Brown, the co-founder and → Read More
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