The buying and selling of virtual goods is an extremely nascent market that seems to be heating up dramatically. Almost daily there are announcements pronouncing large virtual good revenues on the horizon and new forms of payments and rewards for the intrepid user.
OK, the title may be a slight exaggeration, but the data from a new study by the social-contact search site Rapleaf is nonetheless interesting.
In what they claim is the largest social-network study ever done, Rapleaf looked at the social connections of both men and women. All told, they collected data from over 30 million people on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Hi5 and others.
I’m not sure whether to call this data portability or just making it easier for social-networking services to spam a user’s contacts. But either way, Microsoft has announced partnerships with LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo and Facebook, to enable Windows Live Messenger users to look for contacts on either of the five social-networking sites and vice versa.
If you’re a Web developer or recent computer-science graduate, these are most certainly the best of times. With the groundbreaking launch of Facebook Platform last year, and the subsequent emergence of multiple new [open] social platforms this year–MySpace, Bebo, hi5, Friendster, Ning, Meebo, LinkedIn, etc.–we are experiencing a Geek Renaissance the likes of which the software community has never before seen.
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