Disney Acquires Kids' Social Network, Togetherville

Togetherville, a social network for for families to create safe online neighborhoods for their children under 10 years old, has confirmed that it was purchased by Disney according to Mashable.com. It sets itself apart from other social networks for children by facilitating parent-child interactions.

Togetherville mimics adult social networks in a kid-appropriate way. Each neighborhood is built around each specific child and remains closed to outsiders. Kids have their own profile pages, complete with their photos. In Togetherville, kids can

• play games and brainteasers
• watch videos
• create artwork
• send and receive gifts
• update their status with pre-screened text phrases, called "quips," such as "Who is going to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid?" and "Aced the test. Oh yeah!!"
• send "safe" messages to friends
• and comment on or "Heart" their friends' activities.

All achieved with active participation from friends and family. You and your child build the neighborhood by creating an account on Togetherville.com. You sign in with your Facebook login - no need to create a new username or password. Togetherville automatically finds your Facebook friends and their children who already have Togetherville, and you easily build your child's neighborhood from there. You can "allow" specific friends to become part of your child's neighborhood or invite others in who may not already have Togetherville accounts.

Parks Associates supports Social Networking World Forum, London

Parks Associates is supporting the Social Networking World Forum to be held March 15-16 at the Olympia Conference Centre in London.

This two-day event features four dedicated conference streams: Social Networking World Forum, Enterprise Social Media, Social TV World Forum, and Mobile Social Networking Forum. Tekey speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers plus many more.

For more information about this event, click here.

Parks Associates Supports Social Networking World Forum

Parks Associates is supporting Social Networking World Forum from November 9-10, 2009 in Santa Clara, California.

This two-day conference is dedicated to Social Networking, Enterprise Social Media, and Social TV, featuring key speakers from social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, plus many more.

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Parks Associates supports Social TV Forum, London

Parks Associates is a media partner for the Social TV Forum to be held September 28-29 in London.

This conference will examine the current state of social TV, the challenges in developing and implementing social TV experiences, and the future outlook of social TV. Understand the key trends during social TV - hear an up to date analysis on the current state of the market and how it continues to grow and attract new audiences. Learn about the integration of social networking into the TV and video value chain.

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Parks Associates supports Social Networking World Forum, Asia

Parks Associates is supporting the Social Networking World Forum -Asia from Sept 22-23, 2009 in Singapore, Asia.

The Social Networking World Forum - Asia is supported by some of the largest global brands and organizations who are using social media to effectively execute marketing and PR strategies.

The event also features from regional heads of the popular social networking sites to provide insight on market conditions and learn how they adapted their service to expand to this region. The event also features debate and analysis on current trends, market forces, and how brands and organizations are exploiting this new media to market products and services.

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Casual gaming revenues to top $1 billion by 2013

Social networking and community features enable gaming companies to expand --

Online gaming companies should embrace social networking and community features as key strategies in continuing the rapid growth of the gaming market, according to international research firm Parks Associates. In its new report Networked Gaming: Driving the Future II, the firm forecasts the market for premium casual games will exceed $1 billion in revenues by 2013.

Parks Associates notes that social and community features can help companies in casual gaming expand beyond their traditional target demographic of women ages 35-54. Offering features such as a persistent identity and integration with social network sites allows companies to maintain their core audience while broadening their appeal.

Game companies should use social networks and gamer communities as marketing and distribution channels for their new and existing games. Gaming has proven remarkably recession-proof, so as companies try to capture subscriber dollars, these offerings will serve as differentiators in a very competitive market.

These features can also build gamer interest and loyalty among the growing number of free-to-play MMORPGs, which will include over 20 million gamers by 2013. The report recommends large game publishers should build cross-platform, gamer-centric networks. Online publishers should also leverage open-platform efforts like Facebook Connect and MySpaceID, allowing users to enter online gaming websites with their social network ID and share their online activities with their network of friends.

Networked Gaming: Driving the Future II analyzes a variety of networked gaming technologies and business models. The report includes company profiles, consumer data, and market forecasts.

Parks Associates supports Social Networking World Forum

Parks Associates is a media partner for the Social Networking World Forum.

The Social Networking World Forum will take place from March 9-10, 2009 in Olympia, London. Its the perfect event for professionals to learn and discuss the future development of social media. Featuring key speakers from social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, the conference aims to address core issues such as monetization, future technologies/services, engaging social groups with brands and how businesses can get the most out of social and business networks.

This two day conference dedicated to social networking will be co-located with the Mobile Social Networking conference.

For more information regarding these events, click here.

New Life for Lifetime's Website

The recent decision by Lifetime Networks to turn its Internet site into a web 2.0-style social network is a good one, in my opinion, and an example of how traditional media companies can leverage new trends to their benefit. Lifetime has a strong demographic focus which gives its viewers something in common and a reason to congregate together online. Not everybody who watches Lifetime will become an active user, of course, but that’s not the point. Some people will seek a stronger, more dynamic experience and Lifetime will now be able to provide it. This will help reinforce viewing habits among its most loyal fans, strengthen brand consciousness, and lure new viewers. Similarly, it will provide another advertising path to its TV audience. Just as it would be unthinkable today to have a TV show without some kind of web presence, I think it will eventually be unthinkable to have a TV show without some kind of features that enable audience interaction. The real question in my mind is not whether there should be these kinds of features but rather how much interactivity is really needed. This will be a harder question to answer and it will differ from show to show.

Oberon Banks on Web 2.0

Oberon Media, a leading casual gaming company, today revealed that it will launch a developer API for Google's OpenSocial standard, a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. According to company officials, ""It will encourage more interactivity among casual gamers, more viral spread among this audience and result in more opportunities to monetize this activity for our partners. Together with our developer partners, we will enable people to interact more closely through casual gaming on Google's OpenSocial Standard."

The leap of Oberon represents an overall trend of casual gaming companies embracing Web 2.0 and social media. In a recent press release about our new casual gaming report, we asserted that casual gaming is still the most popular online entertainment activity but warned casual gaming companies that social networking and online video are catching up quickly. "“The casual gaming industry cannot rest on its laurels. In order to counter the growing competition from other online activities, the industry needs to continue to grow its fan base and find ways to better monetize its existing audience.”

In the casual gaming report, we provided further commentary regarding casual gaming and Web 2.0:

Compared to the flamboyant marketing campaigns of the core video games, the majority of casual games have no brand recognition, and publishers lack financial resources for traditional advertising or marketing. Although casual game portals promote casual titles, it is word of mouth that helps casual games become successful. Social networking is therefore a perfect fit for casual game marketing. Several companies have begun to leverage popular social networking Web sites. PopCap is mulling over the possibility of placing Bejeweled or Zuma on MySpace or Facebook. Kongregate, a new game portal that relies on user-generated game content, has a widget for players to share their game scores and achievements on Facebook and will soon add friend challenges and embedded gaming functions. Nevertheless, the traditional casual games players are not avid users of social networks. Although for companies like Kongregate and casual MMOs/virtual worlds that are targeting younger audience, combining casual games and social networks make sense, it seems for companies mainly focusing on older females, the network marketing mechanism will work better because the audiences are already familiar with Mary Kay or Amway. A more advanced implementation of Web 2.0 marketing is for game publishers to set up their own social networking circles to spread the word and promote games. Big Fish Games broke ground in this area by establishing two parallel programs -- Principal Network Partner (or PNP) and MyGameSpace. They mirror network direct marketing schemes, sharing sales revenue with users and affiliates. To date, these two programs account for 25 -30% of new users to the Big Fish Games portal.

Few people would pay to use social networking sites

Over 70% of social networking users would stop using a site

Few U.S. consumers are willing to pay a monthly fee to use social networking sites, according to Digital Media Habits II, a new survey from market research firm Parks Associates. This online survey of Internet users found 72% of social networking users would stop using a site if required to pay a $2 monthly fee. Likewise, nearly 40% would stop if a site contains too many advertisements.

These findings present a challenge to the companies competing in the social networking space. Parks Associates found 80% of broadband users ages 18-25 use these sites on a monthly basis; however, monetizing these users is proving to be difficult, with even category leaders such as MySpace struggling to turn big profits.

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Survey Finds Social Networking Users Have Little Loyalty

Network-hopping, widgets & links connect, cross-pollinate the social networking market

MySpace users are chronically unfaithful, according to Parks Associates' "Web 2.0 & the New Net," a new report that focuses on the social networking market. Nearly 40% percent of MySpace users keep profiles on other social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook. Loyalty among the smaller social networking sites is even lower, with more than 50% of all users actively maintaining multiple profiles.

These trends highlight a peculiar aspect of the market for social networking services. Nearly half of all social networkers regularly use more than one site; one in six use three or more. The result is an increasingly interlinked environment tied together by links, widgets, and the users themselves. "MySpace is a growing ecosystem and one that ironically now extends beyond MySpace itself," said John Barrett, the lead author of the report, "Web 2.0 & the New Net."

In Barrett's view, this environment creates fertile ground for new social networking sites and application providers. "A handful of users are all it takes to connect new services to the MySpace-centered environment. From there it can begin to spread virally, assuming of course that it offers something people want."