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The Social Times covers news, analysis and insight pertaining to the social web. Learn how to brand yourself and your company via the social web.

Social Ad Summit: Michael LazerowOctober 10

I finally have the rest of the videos from Social Ad Summit and will be posting them over the coming days. This video is a plenary keynote by Mike Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, talking about the challenges facing the industry as a whole and describing where it’s going. It’s a great overview and I highly recommend watching the entire video as Mike makes a lot of great points.

If you want to watch more videos from the Social Ad Summit check out our Social Ad Summit page.

Hitwise Publishes More Useless Numbers to Chew OnOctober 10

Looking for some interesting statistics on social networks? Good, because Hitwise publishes a new set of stats with negative implications every other Friday. The latest data shows that Facebook is the number two site in the United Kingdom and while it continues to grow, the pace is slowing rapidly. Is Facebook’s traffic going to drop because of the impeding doomsday recession? Hell no! Users are going to spend more time on the site since they aren’t out spending money.

Has Facebook begun to see a serious slow down in its growth? Honestly, I don’t think so. Compete statistics show that the company’s overall growth continues and while social networking growth domestically may be slowing a little, international growth potential is massive. That’s why we here about a new language translation service from social networks on a weekly basis.

The bubble isn’t bursting on social networks anytime soon and while I’d love to post a dramatic chart that can be used to claim death and destruction of social networks, all early warning signals have proven false time and time again. So if you are looking for a massive implosion somewhere on the web, you may want to target another space because it sure as hell isn�

Mingle360 Offers Real-life Social Networking DeviceOctober 10

D.C. based Mingle360 will soon release a device called the “MingleStick” which simplifies the process of exchanging contact information typically provided by the exchange of business cards. The device does not actually exchange contact information with others but instead exchanges a unique identifier which references a user’s identity on the Mingle360 network.

Numerous companies have developed tools that attempt to resolve the challenges of organizing contact information. Even social networks have jumped in the game. Facebook for example has built in a contact list into their mobile application which lets users keep track of their friends’ latest contact information. Numerous companies are fighting for a piece of the personal contact management pie but nobody has yet to really dominate the market.

One of the most significant value propositions presented by Mingle360 is that which is offered to sponsors at trade shows. When users visit sponsor booths at trade shows, sponsors get access to the visitor’s contact information for lead generation purposes. When the user returns home and plugs the MingleStick into their computer, sponsors that they visited throughout the day become visible.

Mingle360 is definitely looking to solve an extremely important issue. The primary challenge for the company will be user ado

Ning Launches Support for OpenSocialOctober 10

Today, Ning announced that they now support OpenSocial version 0.7. While one step away from the latest version of OpenSocial, this is the first time that applications have been available on the white-label social network platform. The platform will lunch with 25 to 30 applications including Box.net, PollDaddy, Shopit, and Emote! by RockYou. There also appears to be a poking application called “BuddyPoke” but we are unaware of who the developer behind it is.

Ning did say that they are launching their own applications that were developed in-house. The site continues to grow quickly, attracting over 3.2 million people domestically last month according to Compete.com. Now profiles across networks will have access to applications to add some personal flare. The concept of having a distributed white-label social networks with access to all the OpenSocial applications is a powerful one.

Soon enough it will be all about choosing the platform you want to use for your organization, all of which leverage a single standard to make applications installable across all. Well, that’s how it would be if everything goes right for OpenSocial. Unfortunately there are a few hurdles that the standard still needs to surpass. One of which is the development of applications using the OpenSocial standard that organizations would find to be valuable.

For now, you can leverage these applications on

MySpace Announces Winners of TheGame 08October 10

The markets in Japan may be getting crushed right now, but one lucky developer will be celebrating with a $30,000 cash prize at the Tokyo Game Show. The application, which was ironically developed by a company called “Contests2Win.com”, is called youCharades and “is a Video Talent Platform where users can guess various titles acted out by their friends and fellow users.” Contests2Win.com appears to be a fairly large organization rather than a small developer.

Other finalists include Crazy Life, The Ninja Webcam Game, and SmartBaby!. According to the release, MySpace will translate the application into Korean, Japanese, and Chinese and promote it as a “Featured Application” for free, meaning they won’t have to pay $75,000 for one week of promotion.

For those of you looking to participate in the MySpace gaming competition domestically, tough luck! The company has yet to announce any plans to launch a similar competition here in the United States. The next interesting test for these applications will be user adoption. So far, SmartBaby! ha