Buzznet Hits Sweet Spot
according to Mashable today...
"Along with Imeem, the other growth spurt we were alerted to recently was that of Buzznet, a site that we’ve labeled in the past (unfairly) as a Flickr-type photo sharing platform. We were reminded of this steep upward incline today by Hitwise, which points out that Buzznet and Imeem are the fastest growing social networks right now.
Imeem, in fact, ranks 6th in terms of market share, while another site we unfairly overlook - BlackPlanet - is in 4th place. Buzznet grew 148.4%, while Imeem grew 145.7% from January to February 2007. Hoverspot and Bebo are also seeing strong growth. (Remember that all these stats are for the US market - hence Friendster, Orkut and other international successes are less well represented.)
We already told you why Imeem was growing: a nice, open media sharing platform and heavy usage of their widgets on MySpace. Allegations about copyrighted content (by, uh, me - oops!) almost broke that MySpace link, but a music licensing deal between Imeem and Snocap seems to have put them back in the good books.
A source I spoke to a few weeks ago said that Buzznet’s sudden, almost vertical, growth was also attributed to MySpace - some kind of profile tool, perhaps. I haven’t been able to nail down exactly what the service was, but a quick search of MySpace reveals masses of content linking back to Buzznet.
If that’s the case, MySpace isn’t really losing market share - instead, it’s expanding its influence as many of the other social networks come to rely on it. The secret now is to figure out how to embrace and even monetize that flourishing ecosystem, rather than shutting it down.
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