network

Here in the U.S., there's really only one big player in the sector of social networking sites geared toward professionals eager to make business connections: LinkedIn. Other business-oriented social networks have emerged, but none have shown signs of really eating into LinkedIn's stateside market share. That, however, is what Xing is trying to change.

Xing, formerly known as the less catchy OpenBC (BC stands for "Business Club") got its start in Germany and now boasts 1.69 million members. The company's moved beyond Germany largely through acquisitions and partnerships; when it expanded to Spain, … Read more

Earlier this week, Mozilla Labs made news with its announcement of a social networking add-on called The Coop. According to the official post on the Mozilla Labs blog, The Coop is "a Mozilla Labs project to experiment with adding social tools to the Web browser." For those of us who know about Flock (download for Windows)--a Firefox-based browser with added "Web 2.0" features--that sounds like a very familiar concept. So what does it all mean for the future of Firefox and Flock?

Yesterday, I had a chance to briefly discuss The Coop with Chris … Read more

Back in November of last year, our U.K. sister blog reported that JVC would be releasing a new line of sleek, flat-panel-friendly, virtual surround home-theater systems that also featured streaming media capabilities in a couple of the models. Well, word is that one of those systems, the Sophisti DD-3 is actually shipping--or about to ship--in the U.S. It carries a list price of $999.95 and seems semi-intriguing on paper.

JVC calls the 3.1-speaker system, "A new type of home theater system, featuring a Network Media Player that serves as the nerve center of the home … Read more

The Mozilla Foundation's Labs has launched The Coop, a project that will let people keep track of their friend's online activities. The add-on will create a row or column of friends' photos. When a photo glows, the user can see that a friends has a new link, photo, blog, or video to share from content-sharing services such as del.icio.us and Flickr. The project planners envision using RSS or another mechanism to move the data between people's browsers. For more information, check out this News.com article.

Wealth Base Camp, a recently-launched social networking site that I originally heard about at the New York Web 2.0 Meetup, encourages its user base to "live up to your dreams." The site is geared toward folks who have caught the entrepreneurial bug and are looking to figure out how to get themselves off the ground--and then make some bank.

Basically, it's like a "niche" version of LinkedIn--instead of a social networking site for business users in general, it's specifically for those with a particular set of needs and objectives ("creating wealth&… Read more

CampusRank is a new service for ranking fellow college students, using a variety of yearbook-like categories. The service ties into Facebook, making use of the social network's application programming interface, so users simply log in with their Facebook account to begin voting. CampusRank launched quietly last week, and is making its official live service announcement tomorrow morning. The service is limited to just under 300 college networks, and does not allow private groups or company users.

CampusRank lets users choose from 34 categories to nominate friends for things like "Most Athletic," "Most Friendly," "Best Hair," and so on. And by friends, I mean that CampusRank won't let you nominate people from your school who aren't on your Facebook friends list. You can't even look them up--a major flaw in my opinion. To sort through the people who are your Facebook friends, CampusRank provides a quick list to scroll through. Once someone has been nominated, there's a ranking system where other CampusRank users can rate them on a scale of 1 to 10.

CampusRank is an interesting take on combining social democracy tools and social networks in one space. However, things get mired down by the friends list limitation and by requiring Facebook users to venture off-site to use the service, two things that need to change before the service can really take off. Screenshots after the jump.

Related: Mosoto, HotOrNot

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We just got the word on a new social network called UltraSoundd. It's aimed at unborn children who want to blog their lives and post pictures and videos of their dwelling space to share with friends. Other social networks have similar efforts, but with their parents managing the profile and posting updates. Ultrasoundd lets the kid do all the work. The site just secured a $2 million round of Series A funding from Gerber's parent company Novartis.

To set up an Ultrasoundd account, parents need simply register with the site and download a small, 130KB Java application to … Read more

Can you imagine a MySpace: The Movie, full of self-promoting emo kids, strippers, and dirty old men? How about LinkedIn: The Movie, with a cast of social-climbing tools who love to pass around business cards at parties? Yeah, not such awesome ideas. Which is why I'm beyond skeptical of the potential for Livemansion: The Movie, a movie created by entertainment and acting social networking site Livemansion, to be any kind of success.

My point is this: American Idol might still be hot, but there are some things in the entertainment world that probably shouldn't be left up to … Read more

This group of presenters at Under the Radar is focused on tools that let regular people (read: not coders) create Web sites and tools to make things easy for site visitors and customers.

My Payment Network provides small-businesses and education payment systems aimed at cutting administrative costs and the hassle of paper checks. For schools, it's a chance to add an online payment system for things like sports enrollment fees, and equipment costs. For small businesses, it's another way to handle payment processing. My Payment Network is comparable to PayPal, but offers customizable controls for those in charge … Read more