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Hands up those of you who remember the crawling slinky? How about the firmer water-bed? What about the hula hoop - sold over 60 million in 1958. Poodle Skirts? Sock Hops? 3-D Movies? The Conical Bra (I know Madonna does), Beatniks? Pet rock? The Macarena? Flared Pants? Hot Pants? Leg Warmers? Yep - all fads, every last one of them. Big buzz for a few months then pop. They still have some die-hard fans of course but in the main, they entered our consciousness with a bang and went out with a whimper. So what I hear you ask?  

 The recent news that Facebook lost users in the UK to the tune of 5% when comparing December 2007 to January 2008 has set the Web2.0 world a wondering. Its a small drop and a localized drop so no need to panic yet. Facebook traffic overall is actually 9% higher than 3 months ago. But the UK figure is a scar on an otherwise unblemished record. It could be a mere hiccup caused by the fact that in December many people took a one or two week vacation and spent at least some of the time surfing - then went back to work and school January. Or could it be a sign of things to come - the end of the Facebook fad? Web2.0 social networking about to be consigned to the skip along with Deedly Boppers? Probably not just yet but if the history of consumerism tells us anything it’s that the bell is tolling for social networks and Facebook. Image courtesy of Dr Fad 

Hot on the heels of Facebook, Mobango, a mobile social network that allows members to publish, convert and share user generated content for their mobile, have released localized versions in German and Spanish.”The launch of the site in German and Spanish marks an important stage of Mobango’s development. Those are key markets that will contribute substantially to the global growth of our community,” says Fabio Pezzotti, founder and CEO of Mobango.

Mobango’s office in Munich is headed by Anton Zur, who has worked with Mobango since the launch of the global service in 2006 and who has contributed significantly to the growth of the product features. The Country manager for Spain is Paloma Furones who has worked with Mobango since the very beginning.

“We have targeted Germany as it is one of the largest European mobile markets with 97 million subscribers. According to ComScore 34 percent of Germans are also using mobile internet services, the highest rate in Europe,” says Anton Zur.

“The localization of Mobango for Spanish speaking users will allow us to expand beyond our already global platform to make it even more relevant, accessible and interesting for Spanish and Latin American audiences,” says Paloma Furones.

Mobango users can now access the mobile site in their supported languages through any mobile device with Internet access. To sign up for Mobango, German and Spanish users can go to www.mobango.de and www.mobango.es.

With an Q107 investment of EUR2million from Doughty Hanson, I guess that Mobango will soon be trawling the markets for more cash.

Packaged goods giant Mars will become the first advertiser to sell actual products on Facebook, a move aimed at building the commercial credentials of the social network.The deal follows the recent backlash around the launch of Facebook’s Beacon, an advertising platform that allowed brands to pump ads without user consent. Facebook was forced to change the service to include an opt-in element.

This will be the first time that users on Facebook will be able to purchase actual and not “just virtual” products.

The applications will launch on Valentine’s Day. Called Celebrate, the service will enable users to buy actual Mars gifts which can be redeemed at participating stores through the use of a scanable, unique mobile voucher ID.

A user on the Celebrate [Read more]

Facebook has said that it plans to internationalize the site www.facebook.com with translation into Spanish.

Further, the company specified that users who added the Facebook translation application were allowed to submit translations inline while browsing the site.

More than 24 million Britons access Social Networks like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

Bebo has the largest share with 11.2 million in the UK (out of 18million overall).

MySpace has 10million British users (out of 110million overall).

Facebook has 7million British users (out of 62million overall).

The British spend approximately 5.3 hours a month each on Social Networks.