Inside a cramped conference room at Toronto’s Mars Discovery Centre, angel investors listened closely as Nussar Ahmad pitched the future of the Internet.

Equipped with just a cellphone and a laptop connected to the web, Ahmad, director of Addictive Mobility, demonstrated how his company’s latest software application has the ability to cash in on the world of social networking - the web’s latest gold mine.

Using code supplied by Facebook, Ahmad’s software can take pictures snapped on a camera phone and instantly send them to a Facebook profile page.

By Rachana Rathi Globe Staff / December 27, 2007

University of Massachusetts at Amherst freshman Andrew Leavitt has something in common with software creators and advertising professionals - a growing recognition of the marketing power of social networking websites such as Facebook.

“Everyone is on Facebook 24-seven,” Leavitt, 18, of Concord said of his peers. “It is the easiest way to get the word out there.”

A fund-raising veteran of sorts, Leavitt discovered last year that Facebook is a far more effective marketing tool for his charitable events than fliers and word of mouth. And his experience is quickly being affirmed by other local youth with social causes.

Lincoln-Sudbury High School juniors Rebekah Glickman-Simon and Alexandria Giacalone of Sudbury saw Leavitt’s success and used Facebook to help put out the word about their dance at the Concord Armory last month to raise money for victims of the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region. And at Brandeis University in Waltham, students have been using Facebook to organize and sustain protests over the student-activity fees they are being charged by the university.

The website, facebook.com, is where many high school and college students spend hours checking out who’s in a relationship and who’s not, sending faux cocktails and gifts to each other, and playing games like Scrabulous. With some 58 million active users, it can also be a powerful tool for them to promote events, parties, and causes to people far beyond the community of any one school.

The website not only provides broader audience reach, Glickman-Simon, Giacalone, Leavitt, and others say, but also has features that make organizing, promoting, and hosting events easier. Facebook event “invites” allow promoters to provide details about an event as well as deliver special instructions. For example, Leavitt’s invites say no alcohol allowed and provide a map with directions. Facebook also sends out reminders about the event, lets attendees provide feedback after an event, and gives organizers an updated guest list at their fingertips.

“It’s the easiest way, really, to ask people if they’re coming and get responses quickly,” Glickman-Simon, 16, said. Giacalone said they posted pictures of suffering Sudanese children on the invite to get people to “think about the cause more.”

Leavitt sent out an invite earlier this month for a Jan. 12 event to raise money for an annual scholarship offered to a Concord-Carlisle Regional High School student in memory of his mother, who died of breast cancer in 2004.

As of last Wednesday afternoon, 490 people had confirmed that they were attending, 403 people were maybes, 347 people said they could not make it, and 212 had not replied. Two years ago, Leavitt could not have even dreamt of those numbers.

Leavitt, who began organizing charitable events when he was 10, used to spread the word by passing out fliers at lunch. Now he forwards an invite to his growing friends list on Facebook, which his friends promptly forward to their friends, and so on.

His last two events, promoted primarily through Facebook, had a higher turnout than the previous six events combined. In April, he raised about $3,000 for the scholarship through an event in which he says at least 90 percent of the guests attended because of Facebook.

“Facebook really allowed young people to be able to reach other towns,” Leavitt said. “It’s given us the power to bring people together.”

Glickman-Simon and Giacalone attended Leavitt’s dance in April and quickly saw the potential to raise money for a cause close to their hearts.

Both girls had family members perish in the Holocaust, so when they learned that hundreds of thousands of civilians have died since 2002 in the conflict in Darfur, they became determined to help. Glickman-Simon and Giacalone attended a rally in New York City to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis last September, and in August began planning a fund-raiser to benefit the Genocide Intervention Network of Washington, D.C.

Glickman-Simon and Giacalone saw the potential in Leavitt’s marketing model - they didn’t pay for advertising and spread the word primarily through Facebook.

More than 850 people from communities including Concord, Carlisle, Acton, Boxborough, Framingham, Maynard, and Wayland attended the Nov. 17 dance at the Concord Armory, helping the teenagers raise about $12,500. Three-hundred more were turned away because the hall was at capacity.

Leavitt said he hopes to have the same problem next month at his Jan. 12 scholarship dance in the Concord-Carlisle Regional High School cafeteria, where capacity is 650 people. The dance begins at 7 p.m., and tickets are $10.

Rachana Rathi can be reached at rrathi@globe.com

At the beginning of the year, MySpace.com was on top of the social-networking heap. And as 2007 draws to a close, the News Corp.-owned site is still far ahead in page views and user accounts. It continues to expand into both new language markets and original media content like the Web series Quarterlife, and it has earned critical acclaim for the interactive “presidential dialogues” that it organized in conjunction with MTV. Parent company Fox Interactive Media has also expanded its social-media offerings, acquiring image-sharing site Photobucket and widget start-up Flektor.

New social-networking start-ups also flooded the Web (MC Hammer, anyone?) and big names like Yahoo and Viacom made plays in the field, as well (Mash and Flux, respectively).

But this was the year that Facebook caught fire, and even a court battle over the site’s true origins couldn’t stop its momentum for much of 2007.

The real game changer came on May 24, when 23-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the site was releasing code that would let third-party developers create applications to run within the service. Experts considered the Facebook Platform launch a milestone in the evolution of social networks, and developers saw it as their ticket to success. Start-ups devoted entirely to embeddable social-network widgets, like Slide and RockYou, became some of Silicon Valley’s hottest new companies.

Soon after, other social networks decided to follow suit. MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, and others all announced that they would be opening their services to developer applications, too. Google, meanwhile, had its own plan: the search giant unveiled OpenSocial, a standard that any social network could use for a developer platform. With just about every major social media player onboard except Facebook, OpenSocial was the only real threat to the Facebook platform that emerged in 2007.

The hype culminated when Microsoft confirmed that it would invest $240 million in Facebook, putting the social network’s estimated value at a jaw-dropping $15 billion. But things started to unwind when several activist groups, including MoveOn.org, alleged that Facebook was violating user privacy through its new Beacon advertisements, which shared information about users’ activity on retail partners’ sites with their Facebook friends. In the wake of the accusations, Facebook apologized and added more privacy controls, much as it had done a year earlier when users protested the debut of the “news feed.”

Smaller social networks also made headlines. The much-talked-about Digg remained a hot topic. Acquisition rumors floated around late in the year, and in the spring, some ugly legal action almost unfolded when the site refused to obey a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice. Twitter, a start-up devoted to “microblogs” where no entry is longer than 140 characters, took off at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in March. Meanwhile, its chief rival Jaiku was snapped up by Google.

Some of the year’s other social-media acquisitions included music-based network Last.fm, purchased by CBS Interactive; kids’ site Club Penguin, acquired by Disney; StumbleUpon, which eBay bought; and Clipmarks, acquired by Forbes Media.

Not surprisingly, privacy and safety issues remained on the horizon. Both Facebook and MySpace grappled with demands from state attorneys general who were concerned that young people could be exposing themselves to online threats through social networks. Their efforts didn’t do much to stall either site, but served as a continual reminder that even though Silicon Valley might tout a company as the future of communication, legal authorities might beg to differ.
By Caroline McCarthy

When MySpace.com invaded parts of Western Europe last year, it launched customized versions of its site that looked very similar to the original American one. The result: It caught up with and in many cases surpassed local competitors. Now MySpace is embarking on a tougher assignment — moving into countries where Internet conditions require a much more individualized approach.

Having already built local versions for 22 countries and territories outside the U.S., the News Corp.-owned Internet giant starting this month and into next year has plans to launch custom sites in India, Russia, Poland, South Korea and Turkey, according to Travis Katz, managing director of international for MySpace. In each of these countries, Web cultures vary dramatically from that in the U.S. and much of Europe.

In some countries, such as India and parts of Latin America, average Internet speeds are comparatively very slow. So MySpace is developing a less-sophisticated version that probably won’t automatically stream video and music while users are surfing the site, although users could launch such features manually.

At the other end of the spectrum, South Korea boasts average Internet speeds many times faster than the U.S. and a much savvier Web culture. Blogging being hugely popular, MySpace is recasting its South Korean version as more of a blogging service, with new tools that make it easier for users to publish and promote their blogs through their profiles.

In other countries, such as Turkey, social networking is a less-familiar concept, requiring MySpace to design on-site tutorials that explain to users how to navigate the site, find profiles for music bands and search for friends. Language differences pose different problems elsewhere: MySpace is contemplating a move into Israel, but the predominant use of Hebrew there would require a site redesign for users who read right to left.

MySpace executives say launching in these countries won’t generate much revenue anytime soon. But establishing a presence in countries such as India and Russia is important for the day when Internet conditions improve. “We are placing strategic bets,” says Katz. “We are looking at places where there is not a ton of money to be made in the next five or 10 years, but we want to be well-positioned when things get there.”

MySpace parent News Corp. has bought Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Expanding its global footprint is a top priority for MySpace, fighting intensifying competition from rivals such as Facebook Inc. While MySpace retains a big lead in the U.S., Facebook is growing quickly. And outside the U.S., Facebook has passed MySpace — drawing 55 million unique non-U.S. visitors in October to MySpace’s 45 million, according to comScore Inc.

While MySpace has a strong lead over Facebook in Europe, Facebook is the No. 1 social-networking site in a combined category for Africa and the Middle East, according to comScore. And Facebook is likely to become a bigger threat elsewhere: The company also has announced it is translating the site into new languages.

MySpace faces competition from other players elsewhere. In Latin America, where MySpace is a relatively small player, rivals such as Google Inc.’s social-networking site Orkut, and Fotolog and hi5 have loyal followings. Fotolog was recently acquired by French Internet company Hi-Media SA, which intends to market the site aggressively throughout Europe and Latin America. Russia-based Internet company SUP recently paid an undisclosed amount for U.S. blogging and social-networking service LiveJournal, which has nearly 14 million unique monthly visitors world-wide, according to comScore.

MySpace was one of the first U.S. social-networking sites to roll out local versions. Beginning in Europe last year, the company launched customized sites in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy and Germany, since expanding to Austria, Sweden and Denmark, among others.

By Jessica E. Vascellaro

Runner+ is the social network for runners. There are all kinds of tools to help you track and improve your running. You can log in your stats and they can be downloaded in Excel format, or you can see them in a bunch of different charts, or you can compare them to the stats of your friends for a little friendly competition. If you want to keep your stats private, that´s also a possibility. There´s also a forum and various groups to help you with lots of advice, tips, and the latest running news. There´s also a list of power songs recommended by other runners using the site. Videos from YouTube associated with running are available as well. Keep up to date and in shape with Runner+.

“RUNNER+ is a site for runners and joggers who want to achieve more through community and technology. RUNNER+ provides a thriving forums area, groups, member tips & advice, videos, a blog with the latest news, and more. If you use running systems such as the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit, then you will benefit even more. Creating an account is free and only takes a minute.