In India, corporate sector employees productivity is Killed by 12.5% in surfing social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut etc. during the office hours says ASSOCHAM's (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry) Social Development Foundation (ASDF) survey. Morever ASSOCHAM survey  in a press release says - Almost each day, an average corporate employee spends an hour, gluing to various social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, Linkdein etc. for 'romancing' or otherwise drive some satisfaction out of it...with this average corporate employee’s each day working is reduced by an hour from 8 hours to 7 hours. Young professionals join the social networking sites the most. It also reveals that 93% of youngsters are aware of social networking sites. Orkut and Facebook are found to be the most popular online destinations among survey respondents. 73% of aged 45-58 spend over an hour online daily to use online sources to access news. On the other on same note and on same day an interesting reports by CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) says that growth momentum of the services sector in India has increased during April–October 2009, compared to the same period during 2008. If one has to go by ASSOCHAM than productivity has already been ...

Recently a research has been conducted by TrendStream, who publishes the Global Web Index and the research is based on interviews with 32,000 Internet users in 16 countries including India. The research outputs a visualization that shows the different kind activities performed by online users in major countries across he globe called - Global Map of Social Web Involvement. Interestingly the reports also shows some very positive aspects of India's online activities such as writing blogs, using micr-blogging services, uploading videos and photos where it leads most countries (user volume in millions) like UK, Germany, Australia, Italy, France, Germany and Japan. Moreover, when it comes to percentage of total online users - More people in India write their own blogs and use Micro-blogging services in India than US. The report is extremely useful for all those who are on verge of starting any internet or web startups in India or any countries listed in this report or planning to have one, with all these social web involvement matrix one can plan out a specific traits, features in their websites, portals or internet services to take advantage of what people are more prone to do with doing activities more than others. Global Map of ...

Social networking which is integral part of web 2.0 wave, as users have much more participation level in this domain along with networking that lure them more than anything. When talking about this, names that appears in anyone's' mind are Facebook, Orkut or MySpace leaders in social networking and all of them have big names, brand and most importantly money to pay to their developers, visualizers etc. however today one can find plenty of scripts to make their own facebook clones or myspace kinda network. In India Agriya Infoway a chennai based web solution company provide ready made social network software called Kootali with a price tag of $247 and contains all the features you would expect in a professional social network package, friends, albums, sending messages, groups, events and more. Interestingly the company also provides other scripts as well such as social bookmarking script, video sharing software. In a similar fashion another chennai based company i-netsolution provide commercial PHP based Orkut Clone with similar layout/ look-n-feel as Orkut is having along with admin interface so any amateur HTML developer can run it likewise to blogging software, watch the user view of same here. iScripts.com is providing an another PHP based open source ...

SocialMedian, a Pune and New York based social news network has been acquired by XING, a global business & professional network, We have covered the review of SocialMedian in July this year when founder Jason Goldberg, the one who is also behind Jobster.com released SocialMedian in beta mode. Together, SocialMedian & XING will connect people with the people, information, and resources they need to get their jobs done, follow their interests, and pursue their passions. The entire socialmedian team will be joining XING as part of the acquisition. Jason will be relocating to Hamburg, where he will lead up a major new initiative for XING as VP of the XING Application Platform. In this new role, in addition to strengthening and enhancing the socialmedian service, Jason will also be responsible for managing global partnerships for application developers and content providers to connect with the XING network. In a press release, XING mentioned that it will continue to grow and enhance socialmedian as a standalone service. There will be no interruption for socialmedian users.

SocialMention is a new social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and micro-blogging services. The service uses numerous sources to fetch respective content. In search engine category it would be the first attempt at being search portal of social media related content along with user generated content especially Bookmarks, Comments & Microblogs at one place. Also, if we set the success factor apart (though my best wishes to SocialMention) it would be pretty good concept for online startups to further move this concept ahead. All the while, SocialMention allows to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Search results are aggregated from numerous popular social media sources, including Google blog search, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Flickr, Digg, YouTube etc. (SocialMention Sources) and remixed as a single stream of information. The data is fresh, which means you can track conversations as they are happening in real-time. In addition to web-based search results, Social Mention also features email alerts and personalized RSS feeds for automatic and instant updates. As few word of advice, I would suggest the portal should inculcate more blogs, ...