Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC described LinkedIn as ‘Facebook for losers’, which got me thinking about the reputations which social networking sites have.

I also considered LinkedIn as the social networking website for professionals, not ‘losers’, and I must agree with an astute commenter, Jim_Panzie, on the BBC blog:

LinkedIn is a great way to keep up with Professional contacts, Facebook and Myspace just didn’t work for me they seemed to be for kids

Perhaps LinkedIn is for people who ‘want to put their CV out’, but even that is a form of networking (just perhaps not as social as Facebook etc).

Facebook used to seem relatively sophisticated when compared to MySpace, and it struck me as attracting an elder and better educated audience. TechCrunch ventured to even claim that choosing between the two was simply an IQ test!

TechCrunch, in 2007, stated that the introduction of widgets into Facebook was a fantastic idea but it has lowered the tone of the network. An increasing amount of young people consequently started to use Facebook and it made the site lose some of its social element and made it more into a playground.

MySpace and Bebo generally stir up images of a bunch of teenagers with distasteful backgrounds and music.

I steer clear of major social networking sites; they’re more hassle than they’re worth and make us unproductive.

Different ages, and classes, use different social networks. Class divides, even online.

POPTUB is a channel on YouTube which produces which produces a daily show of hot videos, produces interviews and goes behind the scenes on many other productions. POPTUB is professionally produced, sponsored by Pepsi. I personally don’t see the attraction of POPTUB, but I find it interesting that old media are so keen on them.

Highlighting popular videos isn’t even that new of an idea. Forums and several vodcasts, like Best of YouTube and Internet Superstar, have been that great an idea. So what makes POPTUB so different and so popular with YouTube superstars like HotforWords, Obama Girl and Nalts? Frankly, I do not know. HotforWords even covered them on her show, and claimed that it was not a ‘paid advertisement’. The majority of her viewers did not find POPTUB as interesting as HotforWords did, obviously, as they only gave the video a rating of 2.5/5.

Old media clearly like POPTUB too. How many other YouTube channels could get behind the scenes with Fall Out Boy or the cast of High School Musical? According to Cnet, ‘Poptub has promised advertisers 3 million views of Poptub by the end of the year’. Perhaps overly ambitious aims like that are the reason why!

YouTube viewers don’t seem to be too eager to watch POPTUB. Out of their 149 videos, the most popular is an interview with HotforWords which attracted 214,000 views (but only a 2.5 rating), followed by three with 40,000-60,000 views. The rest have less than 20,000 views; the majority have less than 10,000.

Thousands of views may seem impressive, but considering the amount of hype POPTUB has gathered, high profile interviewees and a presumably professional production, that’s quite low. That’s actually very low when one considers the world’s most annoying 6 year old can gain 800,000 views in less than three days!

Apparently, Google are responsible for POPTUB.

I wonder what’s going on with POPTUB, and how they get high profile members of the YouTube community to support them. It strikes me that POPTUB does not understand what the YouTube community wants, which would be extremely bad if Google were reponsible for it, as that would mean they do not even know their own userbase. For example, POPTUB clearly misjudged the viewers of shows like HotforWords, who clearly didn’t appreciate their show simply plugging another.

POPTUB, despite its backing, will fail. Why? YouTube users don’t like it. I’d dare say they prefer amateur shows and they dislike TNCs producing shows, and would rather watch the likes of Revision3.

I must admit I’m a big than of tycoon games, whether that be Theme Hospital, Rollercoaster Tycoon or OpenTTD. But sometimes, you come over some really insane ones.

Hospital tycoons

Hospital tycoons are a bit of a silly idea in countries like the UK where our hospitals are public. Games like Theme Hospital
are purposely silly and that’s what makes them fun, but some games like Hospital Tycoon try to be funny but fail… badly. Amazon reviews on Hospital Tycoon comment that too much of your time is spent preventing staff starting romance and treating the extremely limited number of diseases.

School tycoon?

Whilst many schools are either private or privately-run, I really fail to see how one could run a school as a business!

School Tycoon rips this presumption to pieces! Your school starts out as a single, portable classroom and expands into a school with bigger classrooms, which come in three sizes for 10 different subjects, and you can even add sporting facilities, vending machines and fast food restaurants (Jamie Oliver hasn’t reached the States yet, evidently!), detention rooms and if you really feel like it a rollercoaster!

The game actually has very good reviews on Amazon, averaging 4.7/5!

Prison Tycoon

Prison Tycoon is a game which amazingly has 3 sequels (such as Prison Tycoon 3) where you are put in charge of a private prison. You must ensure prisoners behave, that staff are happy and that you’re making a profit.

In the sequels, you must also ensure your staff aren’t taking bribes, deal with famous prisoners and design your own jails.

Initially, you start off in a minimum security prison before working your way up to a Super Max!

The games actually sound interesting and aren’t exactly expensive, but I do wonder how playable they are!

Oil Tycoon
Oil Tycoon sees you run an oil company in ‘17 historical and modern scenarios’, ‘50 animated historical events such as World War 1 and 2′ in ‘10 major cities’ with ’superb graphics’ in a ‘realtime, realistic share market’!

Fascinating, eh? George Bush better watch out!

Beer Tycoon

Running a brewery probably sounds fun, but according to reviews of Beer Tycoon
on Amazon, you’re better off to ‘buy some paint instead’ despite the wonderfully interesting features of the game like the ‘50 ingredients one can brew the beer from, including various kinds of hops and malts’.

I better go buy some paint to watch dry!

Want more? Go enjoy Ice Cream Tycoon Deluxe, Caterpillar Construction Tycoon, Donald Trump’s Real Estate Tycoon and if you feel a little ‘Murdochian’ you could try Tabloid Tycoon. Yes, they’re real games!

Every year, I try to help the world through participating in Blog Action Day and this year’s them is ‘poverty’. I thought this would be a good day to mention a really interesting website.

Everyclick is a UK website which makes fundraising for charities easier and allows you to fundraise in a number of innovative ways.

Everyclick allows people to raise money for a charity of their choice, for example one which tackles poverty like Oxfam, through a variety of means, providing you register with them.

A charity of your choice can earn money each time you search the web using Everyclick, as Everyclick make money through sponsored links. Another way charities earn using Everyclick is if you use Everyclick before you buy goods online, so your charity can benefit from affiliate programmes.

Charities can be supported in more traditional ways if you prefer; Everyclick allows you just to donate money!

One interesting product are their eVouchers which you can give to someone so they can make a donation to a charity of their choice.

Everyclick, as a company, take a share of any money raised (about 5% of donations and 50% of search revenue) but it still provides charities with money they wouldn’t else have!

Web 2.0 has been around for years now and the pace of promising new start-ups and large acquisitions has seemed to become slower.

In my opinion, there are not as many fresh ideas online lately as there was just a few years ago.

I haven’t seen a new site of similar innovation of YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us, Wikipedia or Twitter in over a year. Whilst this is far from a scientific measure, it is, in my opinion, a somewhat good indication. Most start-ups I read about are now just a mixture of old ideas.

A slightly more scientific measure is just reading Mashable or TechCrunch. Once, these weblogs (like mine) covered every new half-decent start-up but now they seem to do more analysis. To me, this suggests that there are less half-decent start-ups or that perhaps blogging about start-ups is no longer as profitable, but that obviously means it’s harder for start-ups to launch.

The so-called ‘credit crunch’ also means there is less money to fund new start-ups and many internet companies are losing value. If the Internet’s biggest success, Google, can lose about 25% of its value in one month, it doesn’t send a good message out regarding the financial state of the web.

Google’s loss of value reflects the DOW Jones and its competitors, so the issue is obviously one with the economy in general. IANAE, but if the economy suffers, companies have less money to spend on advertising, which is how a large number of online companies generate their income.

With less money and so many ideas already having been used, making a start-up will become increasingly hard. I feel Web 2.0 is over, and whilst some start-ups will pop up, nowhere near as many to which we were accustomed will. Web 2.0, however, has taught us the importance of immediate access to information and adding a social dimension whenever possible.