There are a lot of credit card initiative programs going on right now, given the economic state of affairs and the increased standards for lending out money and credit. So when I learned of Citi Cards teaming up with MySpace, I wasn’t at all surprised. Gotta get ‘em while they’re early, right?

The new offering coming from Citi is called Citi Forward, which is a credit card that’s supposed to be more tailored to the financial needs of current consumers. Citi Forward aims to encourage the maintenance of good “healthy” credit, by incentivizing consumers by things like lowering their purchase interest rates by a quarter percent when cardmembers use credit wisely. Other rewards include ThankYou Points each billing period for paying on time and staying under the credit line.
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Bebo has undergone a lot of changes and upgrades in the past few months, especially after having been acquired by AOL last summer. And Silicon Alley Insider has posted some screen shots of the upcoming Beb 2.0, which will be an entirely new version of the site and user profiles.

The biggest change looks to be the inclusion of “Timelines,” which will be a lot like the Facebook news feeds. Bebo’s Timelines will display user photos, videos and blog posts in the life stream, a feature that was added to Bebo profiles last December. This could very well be further implementation of AOL’s other acquisition, SocialThing.
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hi5 entered into the virtual currency space late last year, and it seemed like an all around good move for the social network. Having now delved into the world of virtual gifting, enabling easier virtual exchange was achieved by the offering of hi5 Coins, which can be applied to a great number of things representing supply and demand through the network in this sense. So where does that leave hi5 in the grand scheme of social networks? VentureBeat seems to think that virtual gifting could be he jackpot for hi5.
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Friendster has opened up some new offices in Asia, which makes sense seeing as the social network has a stronghold in the Asian countries–not the U.S. The company made a series of announcements this week regarding changes being made to Friendster, including new executives that have been brought on board, and a number of new partnerships aimed at further developing Friendster’s dominance in the Asia Pacific.

New office locations include Singapore and Sydney, Australia, which is where Friendster’s CEO Richard Kimber will be based along with the new hires for marketing and business development. Given its proximity to the Asia Pacific, it’s not entirely surprising to see Friendster establish central executives in Australia. The U.S. global headquarters, however, are now in Mountain View, CA, where some executives and cross-department employees will remain. Looking towards the rest of the year, Friendster has made it quite clear that it will be focusing a great deal of attention on the Asia offices, where at least 80% of the company’s new hires will be based.
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Social networking isn’t just for the youngsters anymore. It’s for the young at heart. According to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report, the share of adult Internet users on social networks has more than quadrupled in the past four years. From 8% to 35%, that’s a huge leap in terms of the adoption rate for using online social networks. And this number also means that adults represent a larger amount of users than the 65% of online teens who also use social networks, making the influence of adults on social networks significant and on the rise.
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We’ve seen so many social networks launch in the past four years, it makes even my head spin. But one key differentiating factor between many of the peripheral social networks and the major players like Facebook is the actual ability to network. Socially.

The benefits of social networking (with a purpose) began to come into focus when MySpace musicians found they could connect with each other and audiences on a professional level. And when it comes to social networking for the rest of the professionals out there, LinkedIn is the place to go. Even though Facebook hasn’t always had the best format for direct networking with the purpose of finding a job, it’s still very useful for this objective. So now that millions of people across the U.S. are in need of a job, no thanks to our current economic crisis, many are turning to Facebook and LinkedIn for recommendations and job leads.
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In a time of uncertainty for social networks’ steady revenue, LinkedIn is undergoing an executive shake-up with Chief Executive Dan Nye stepping down. Company founder Reid Hoffman will eventually be taking the company in the direction he sees as the best for LinkedIn, with former Yahoo executive Jeff Weiner acting as interim president for LinkedIn’s day-to-day operations, reports the L.A. Times.

It’s uncertain how long Weiner will be at LinkedIn as the interim president, but Nye will remain with LinkedIn until January to ease the transition. Weiner will also remain in his current position as an executive in residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, the latter of which is a LinkedIn investor.
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The holiday shopping season is upon us, and online advertisers may be considering better use of social networks for more effective advertising this year.  According to AdvertisingAge, a number of advertising tactics have been developing over the years that take advantage of one’s personal network of friends and associates, both offline and online.  Yahoo, for example, has targeted the friends of Yahoo Fantasy players with Fantasy ads, and found an increase of quality click-throughs and uptake as a result.  So this begs the question; can socially graphed advertisements predict what online consumers will buy?
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It’s no secret that among social platform developers Facebook still reigns king. On MySpace though, while there may not be top applications like Top Friends which has close to 38 million installs on Facebook, the top application has over 6 million installs which would rank it among the top 30 applications on Facebook. As Ian Swanson said in my podcast with him last week, he has been seeing the MySpace platform gaining traction.

Additionally there is buzz that MySpace will soon begin adding features that help applications grow virally. Initially there were a lot of restrictions in place but as the restrictions decrease, applications are experiencing more traction. This strategy contrasts Facebook’s in which the platform was completely viral and there were no restrictions on viral growth. Over the past year, Facebook has placed an increasing number of restrictions on developers.

In my opinion this will help MySpace build more positive relationships with developers. While it took some time for the platform to gain traction, MySpace is increasingly become a platform that can compete with Facebook when it comes to reach. While the types of users differ across both platforms it is clear that the MySpace platform has become a viable competitor to the Facebook platform.

The quality of applications are also increasing. Just last night I was playing a flash version of the extremely popular Guitar Hero game. The application has attracted over 160,000 users and the quality is pretty damn good. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to improve my skills. While it’s not as good as the real game it is definitely a fun time.

As the MySpace platform matures I’d expect to see higher quality applications appear and a growth in the application install base. What has your experience been with the MySpace platform? Do you even use MySpace?

In a few months, the concept of most socializing on the web taking place within social networks will seem passé. Most people in the industry have come to accept that socializing is something that will take place everywhere on the web. How that is going to happen exactly is a whole other question. Some believe that we will become more social via a browser plugin, others are supporters of the new platform extensions like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect.

However we get there isn’t as significant and knowing that it will eventually happen. One company which strives to make the whole web more social is RocketOn, which I was introduced to via a Techcrunch article this morning. The company provides users with mini avatars which they can use to interact with other users as they navigate the web.

As you interact with other people on the web, you can also invite them to games provided by RocketOn. Talk about a reduction in productivity! Based on the video below, the tool practically renders most sites useless. It looks really cool but imagine trying to read something while avatars are marching around and trying to talk to you.

So while this appears to be a pretty cool way to have fun on the web and interact with other people, I’m not so sure that this will be the primary way to socialize the web. Then again, on the web it’s not about who’s socializing, it’s about how you socialize so perhaps some people will prefer interaction via virtual avatars. How do you see “social” becoming part of the general web or do you think the web has already been “socialized”?