There’s More To The FaceBook Traffic Story

Om Malik says Facebook traffic is tanking, based on the September Comscore data which shows a 9.3% decline in uniques v. steady uniques at MySpace.

There’s a problem though - he’s showing unique visitor data but talking about traffic. The Comscore data for U.S. traffic shows only a 4% decline, from 15.2 billion to 14.7 billion page views. MySpace declined 2% in that same period.

And the data is also only taking U.S. traffic into account. Over the last year, non U.S. users have grown to become more than half of Facebook’s total audience. Comscore worldwide data runs a month behind U.S. data, so that information is not yet available for September.

But the bottom line is, there isn’t enough information yet to make any kind of definitive statement about Facebook traffic. It’s also worth noting that something very similar may have happened last year (a September dip in traffic) At the very least we need to wait for the international data.

Data is below - unique visitors is top, below is page views.

Wikipedia Hits Mid Life Slow Down

We posted yesterday on the move by the Wikimedia Foundation to relocate from Florida to San Francisco, but aside from the obvious conclusions that the move would allow Wikimedia to tap into the superior developer community out West, there may be another reason as well: a mid life slow down.

It’s tempting to call it a mid-life crisis, but it’s far too bland for that label. Robert Rohde has put together a statistical analysis on Wikipedia activity and has discovered that things are rapidly slowing down on Wikipedia after years of astronomical growth.

According to Rohde, since the beginning of the year the rate of editing articles has declined 17%, new account registrations are down 25%, user blocks are down 30%, article protection is down 30%, uploads are down 10% and article deletions are down 25%.

Rohde also has also put together some graphs here that show that an increasing number of edits are reverts (now at 20%) as opposed to the addition of new material, which he aptly calls “Unproductive Article Edits.”

Exclusive: MapQuest Plays Catch-Up With Launch of Beta

AOL’s MapQuest may be the market-leading map site by a long shot (with 50 million monthly visitors versus 30 million for Google Maps), but it is still playing catch-up when it comes to features, functionality, and mash-up capabilities. Today, it finally took a big step into the modern Web era with the launch of MapQuest Beta. This is not just a sandbox where MapQuest can safely play with the newest Web 2.0 toys. It’s the new face of MapQuest and by the end of the year will take over the main site, which still remains a very 1.0, page-based destination. MapQuest Beta, in contrast, is built on Ajax, and is thus more of a single-pane experience. I got a sneak peek.

Here’s a screen shot of the new MapQuest:

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. . . versus what you see today:

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Despite the improvement, the new MapQuest is still pretty bare bones at this point. You can see the map and driving directions in different panes on the same page, and can also create routes for multiple cities (same as on Google Maps). Or, you can collapse the directions pane so that the map covers the entire page. The search and navigation has been simplified to a one-box approach. You can save maps and routes, and share them with people. And you can print out the exact map image easily at the zoom level you want. There is nothing earth-shattering here, but it adds up to a much-needed upgrade for MapQuest. You can read more details here on the new MapQuest Beta blog.

Over the next few months, though, expect to see new features rolled out at a rapid clip, about every two weeks You will soon be able to drag the location pins around to read what’s underneath (they will remain connected to the spot they are marking by a thin line). The maps will become embeddable in other sites. Live traffic updates will be added. And people will be able to annotate the maps. Again, many of these features are already available on Google Maps or Yahoo Maps.

picture-239.pngBut MapQuest still has the biggest market share, and that share is not yet declining (see chart). Given all the innovation going on with online maps these days, that market share is extremely vulnerable. Now MapQuest will be based on a new technology architecture that hopefully will allow it to respond more nimbly to the incredible diversity of map features and applications that are out there. Still, don’t expect it to do anything too crazy. It’s got 50 million mainstream users that it does not want to alienate. My prediction is that it will remain very much focussed on driving directions and other routing applications, which is its strength. I don’t think we’ll be seeing too many geo-tagged videos on MapQuest. Instead, it will deploy Web 2.0 features to improve its core mapping functions and deepen the loyalty of its existing users. Imagine how grateful they will be when they realize they no longer need to be stuck with a user interface from 1999.

Does Chess Need to be Crowdsourced?

A new site that just launched today called CrowdChess aims to answer that question. You log on and sign up for a game. Each side is made up of teams of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people. Anyone on a team can suggest the next move, and the move that gets the most votes is the one that is played out. (Here are the rules. If anyone reading this ends up playing, please report back your experience in comments).

I am all for tapping into crowd intelligence, and the Web is letting us do that in very interesting ways (see Digg, Wikipedia, Threadless, Freebase, Wikinvest, Kaltura, LingoZ, ZiiTrend, etc.). But does everything need to be crowdsourced? I wonder if a group of amateurs playing CrowdChess will ever be able to beat a grandmaster (or the modern-day version of Deep Blue, for that matter)?

Or will technology, in this case, take something beautiful and destroy it. Can’t two people just sit in a room and play chess?

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Plaxo + LinkedIn + iPhone = Brilliant

TechCrunch has been hard on unified address book provider Plaxo in the past, and probably with due cause, given their previous spam promoting ways, but I am now reevaluating that view based on Plaxo Sync.

I wrote about Plaxo’s improved Sync features back in June; although it sounded good I didn’t really have cause to use it then. Confronted with a “how do I sync various platforms, including the iPhone” problem I hit Google looking for a solution, and I kept finding user recommendations for Plaxo. Plaxo’s Sync tools support a variety of platforms, including Outlook, Internet Explorer (for Yahoo Address Books) Mac OSX and Thunderbird. Unfortunately they can’t sync with Gmail yet, but they can download your contacts from Gmail, although it does sync with Google Calendar.

Plaxo can also download LinkedIn contacts; LinkedIn does offer downloads/ plugins as well but nothing quite as comprehensive as Plaxo. We’ve looked recently at Facebook replacing LinkedIn as a business networking tool, however being able to access LinkedIn connections via Plaxo makes LinkedIn all that much more useful as it delivers access to LinkedIn contacts everywhere, including the iPhone (Plaxo imports into the Mac OSX address book, that can then be synced to an iPhone via iTunes).

The other selling point of Plaxo is the universal contact nature of the product; the ability for people to update their contact details on Plaxo and push that information out to other people is a definite positive.

The basic Plaxo service is free, including the sync functionality. The $49.95 upgrade adds Plaxo support (which if it works well you should never need to use) and duplication filtering. The duplicate filtering tool isn’t brilliant, it missed some duplicates on a test, but after running it a second time it found more; a handy feature but perhaps not worth the $49.95 annual fee.

Blyk launches ad-based mobile network

Blyk, the mobile virtual network operator offering free phone call minutes and messaging in return for sending customers advertising, launches in the UK today. Renting airtime from France Télécom’s Orange network and targeting only 16-to 24-year-olds, the network will target the ads based on a detailed profile customers will fill out on their website. It’s ironic timing. MySpace is today announcing an ad-supported mobile version of its site to get on the new mobile advertising bandwagon.

As I wrote earlier this month, the Blyk launch is timed for the start of the new school term in the UK. It’s a smart move but it’s not surprising. Blyk has a very experienced team, headed by backer former Nokia president Pekka Ala-Pietila and Antti Öhrling, a branding veteran.

Blyk is giving itself 3-4 months to make an impact on the highly competitive but mobile-obsessed UK market and will use real-time feedback on what “the kids” are doing to help brands with the targetting process. To make sure the audience is the right one, only 16-to 24-year-olds will be allowed on it, with cross-checks for age in place. Advertisers, including Buena Vista, Coca-Cola, I-play Mobile Gaming, L’Oreal Paris, StepStone and Yell have already confirmed that they will be among the first advertisers.

Blyk isn’t selling handsets, it’s sending out SIM cards, so customers will need an unlocked phone capable of MMS. Every month, Blyk users will get 217 free texts and 43 voice-call minutes as standard, on condition they opt in to receive up to six ads to their phone a day. It’ll cost 99p per megabyte to browse mobile sites.

Meanwhile the MySpace news coming out of Fox Interactive Media is just part of their overall plans to roll out mobile versions and start picking up ad revenues. FoxSports.com, the gaming site IGN, AskMen, Photobucket and its local TV affiliates will all have mobile versions in the coming months. Right now MySpace has subscription-based version of of the service with AT&T and Helio, but the new mobile sites will work on all US carriers.

The new mobile Fox sites will allow users to send and receive messages and friend requests, comment on pictures, post bulletins, update blogs, and find and search for friends. Initially, advertising will taker the form of sponsorships and banner ads, but the company says it plans to move into more targeted advertising based on registration data and local ads based on a user’s location via GPS.

The concept of using mobile advertising to subsidise calls and thus win market share is not new. Virgin Mobile in the US recently reported that 330,000 of its 4.8 million subscribers have agreed to view ads in exchange for free calling minutes. But basing an entire mobile service on this business model is to date untried, and it’s fairly obvious why. Mobile operators generate billions upon billions in voice and text revenues, yet mobile advertising is estimated to only generate $1 billion to $2 billion in revenues worldwide this year.
However, voice revenues are flat or falling (messaging never goes out of fashion, it must be noted) and the mobile ad market is expected to surge from from $5 billion to $11 billion within five years, generating much needed growth, says the IHT.

The UK market, in particular, is poised to get very, very busy in mobile advertising terms. Last week reports began to circulate based on a Guardian story that Google - a dead cert for a mobile ad play - was considering a move into the UK wireless market after the regulator Ofcom said it would auction off older 2G spectrum currently allocated to Vodafone and O2.

Your Truman Show Takes Lifecasting To Widgets

Lifecasting startup Your Truman Show will present a Video Map Widget at DEMO today, bringing their life story focused video product to social networking sites.

VideoMap can be placed and accessed by anyone using Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, YourTrumanShow or other sites. Its selling point is a graphical video relationship map, which, according to YourTrumanShow’s Founder & Chairman Arturo Artom, “Lets you see who links to you and who you link to as well as the video content you have both collected and may wish to share. VideoMap let’s you go from topic to topic and from life to life.”

See our previous coverage here. Aside from the clever name, Your Truman Show is trying to bring the traditional idea of a blog as an online journal to the lifecasting field. The chronological time line via the “V-Link” interface provides something different in an increasingly competitive vertical.