With the help of Google data, Royal Pingdom have looked at 12 of the top social networks to answer a simple but highly interesting question: where are they the most popular?

The social networks they included in this survey were MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Friendster, LinkedIn, Orkut, Last.fm, LiveJournal, Xanga, Bebo, Imeem and Twitter.

See the results at http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=336.

Via commoncraft.

“… community dynamics [still] require a long-term view. Communities – and I don’t mean flash mobs, groups of 10 people, or event attendees because those are not communities – take time to develop and flourish. Measuring communities based on quarterly earnings calendars is a bad way to go but most businesses are focused on short term performance. We are under such intense pressure to show results that we often abort efforts that play out over longer periods.

Read more at The Social Organization…

This short conversation between a division leader within a Fortune 500 Company and a consultant is a must-read for everyone who’s interested in social networking for the enterprise! Actually, I experienced exactly the same situation not so long ago. The wording was different but the content and the idea were identical.

“… there isn’t one company yet there is one brand. All the companies serve the customer but never in a coordinated fashion rather a splintered effort. The customer doesn’t know who is in charge of what but when dissatisfied with overall service they simply distrust the company while you say it isn’t your fault.”

The sum of social networking + social knowledge management + social watch + collaborative innovation is what we, at b-spirit, call social intelligence in the enterprise. It happens inside the company, across business units, divisions and departments, across the orgchart and regardless of the hierarchy; simultaneously it establishes crosslinks outside of the company with customers, prospects, partners, subcontractors, media organisations, even competitors.

Most companies still go for the internal and siloed approach, restricted to one department or unit. They still do not understand (or at least they pretend to) that such closed projects in closed groups are most likely to fail simply because they will be superseded, sooner or later, by larger and more global initiatives. Problem is: the loss of time and efficiency is often proportional to the loss of customers.

CMS Watch has officially published its Enterprise Social Software Report 2008: Networking & Collaboration Within and Beyond the Enterprise which is available for download.

The report evaluates 20 Social Software vendors against eleven common scenarios, with 250 product screenshots across 450 pages.

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income students are in many ways just as technologically proficient as their counterparts, going against what results from previous studies have suggested.

“What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today. Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. They’re also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology. The Web sites offer tremendous educational potential.

[...]

Now that we know what skills students are learning and what experiences they’re being exposed to, we can help foster and extend those skills. As educators, we always want to know where our students are coming from and what they’re interested in so we can build on that in our teaching. By understanding how students may be positively using these networking technologies in their daily lives and where the as yet unrecognized educational opportunities are, we can help make schools even more relevant, connected and meaningful to kids.”

Christine Greenhow, learning technologies researcher in the university’s College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study

Via ScienceDaily.