Black Web 2.0

Super news takes a very funny look at the battle of the social networks.

Discovered via Baratunde

Over time we’ve profiled social media’s impact on the music industry, covering artist including RadioHead and Soulja Boy, but not to be out done is Grammy award winning rapper and record label CEO, Chamillionare. The north Houston underground mixtape giant, boasted over 3.5 million hits on his personal website prior to his major label deal with Universal Music.

Chamillionare talks with Mashable’s Pete Cashmore after the Digital Hollywood Conference in Los Angeles. In the interview Chamillionare discusses how social media sites contributed to his success in ringtone and album sales, as well as how the current music industry metrics don’t accurately reflect the popularity of an artist’s album. Chamillionaire also discusses how Weird Al’s YouTube parody of “Ridin” (White and Nerdy), help propel the 2006 single to #1 and his subsequent award of Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

Today Carol’s Daughter conducted a bloggers roundtable on Ustream in lieu of a press conference, bloggers and influencer’s were invited to participate, Black Web 2.0 was fortunate to be one of the participants. (more…)

According to the latest U.S. numbers from Hitwise, the top niche dating sites are steadily gaining market share while their big mainstream counterparts stagnate. This report compared the overall market share of the top 5 dating sites; Singlesnet, Plentyoffish, TRUE, Yahoo Personals, and Match to the market share of some of the top niche categories (sexual preferences, race, and religions). The Black niche category included; BlackPeopleMeet, BlackSingles, BlackChristianPeopleMeet.

While mainstream dating websites declined in monthly market share (-7%), Black niche dating sites grew 14% from 5.26% to 6.01% of US market share.

This decline in market share for mainstream dating sites could be due to a number of reasons not examined by this article including; lack of space for mainstream sites to grow and an increase competition from mainstream social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook being just some them, but one thing’s for certain, the “one size fit all” sites are not meeting the needs of the entire population, creating opportunities for success in the niche market.

Source Tech Crunch via Online Personals

Interesting post on TechCrunch about Facebook publishing a guide to viral marketing on their site. See below for a full embedded version: (more…)

The other day I had a nice surprise in my inbox, a private beta invite to Socialthing! I first came in contact with Socialthing! at this years SxSwi. Though I recognized the name I wasn’t quite sure what exactly they did, a quick stop to their website answered the question.

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So if you haven’t heard yet Clutch Magazine is having their 1st Annual Blog Academy this summer. Along with others Black Web 2.0 will be partnering with Clutch to share social media tips on how you can succeed online in this Web 2.0 world. The academy will last for 2 months and will include how-to’s and advice. You can vote on what you want to learn over at Clutch. Oh I almost forgot the best part, It’s FREE!!!

There has been lots of buzz around InteractiveOne, a RadioOne company that plans to focus on interactive web media. Many of us have been wondering what exactly is InteractiveOne and what plans does RadioOne have for it?

I recently noticed there are actually a few sites out there from InteractiveOne that are either in Beta or will launch soon, lets run down them: (more…)

Community Connect was purchased by RadioOne today for $38 million. We broke the news first on Community Connect being up for sale back in February. Community Connect owns BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com, and AsianAve.com. This is a major move in the space as RadioOne continues to make strategic decisions regarding their interactive venture, InteractiveOne.

Markus gave you updated blog posts yesterday, today here is a recap of sorts in pics:

RushmoreDrive Launch Event - NY

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