Loogic English

It was time we dedicated some words to Psicofxp, an internet community founded by Ismael Briasco in the year 2000 and which is now one of the most important websites in Argentina.

I find it interesting to see how a site established since so many years renews its design and offers many new functionalities to turn itself into a site that is much more social. Psicofxp should become an example for all those sites who continue with their outdated design since years thinking that if they tamper with it, their users will leave the site en masse. As long as the interests of the users are respected and the main line of the site is maintained, a change of design should be positive as it shows that the site is evolving and adapting itself to the changing times and styles.

This new design of Psicofxp is the most visible part of the evolution of a forum towards becoming a social network, where the users, apart from sharing opinions and conversations, can upload their photos, videos and create their profiles to strike up connections with their friends in the community.

Lastly, the employment section of Psicofxp is managed by Bumeran, which I understand is some kind of commercial agreement. This contrasts with the tendency we were lately observing in other social networks of creating a classifieds channel with the platform of OLX.

Seen in Kabytes.

It seems that internet and the world of wines get along very well. Lately, there are a lot of blogs, online shops and social networks proliferating around this theme.

Vinogusto is one of those social networks about wine, which we talked of when it received a round of investment and now is worth talking about for the good results it is showing.

When i see cases such as the growth achieved by Vinogusto, I start thinking that there are internet entrepreneurs who have a kind of sixth sense and are capable of creating winner projects whatever they do. François Derbaix is one of those entrepreneurs who has made it with TopRural and is now helping this project succeed as an investor and advisor.

It’s worth taking a look at Vinogusto because i believe it’s a very good example of a social network with open content, where the users create value mostly through their comments. 100.000 user opinions in the community, a great example of what Jesus Encinar was describing the other day as businesses based on user opinions.

Another aspect that stands out is its simplicity, which in other words we call Usability, and that is the secret to gaining the involvement of basic users through their active participation in a web they find easy to use.

Beezzer is a project that started in Brazil and it offers its users the possibility to participate in or create communities that revolve around brands and products. The idea is very good, all of us are fans or followers of particular brands and we like to express our opinion about them whenever possible.

Beezzer allows users to create new groups around brands and other users can then join those groups providing comments, suggestions, uploading photos and videos. Each group has an administrator and the users become part of a ranking in function of their participation in the group.

A community like this should be very interesting for the brands. If a group formed around a brand is able to attract a good number of interested people, it could be proactively leveraged by the brand to get the first hand opinion of its most admiring customers, test out new products, etc.

Seen in wwwhatsnew

 

Sincerely, I wasn’t expecting that Viadeo would jump into buying communities or social networks in Spain and I think it’s good news to continue to stimulate the market.

Viadeo acquired ICTnet as announced by Pedro Sanchez Pernia, their country manager in Spain.

ICTnet has 300.000 users which will from now on be a part of Viadeo, which means an important thrust to the competition with Xing and LinkedIn.

How much did Viadeo pay for ICTnet? As per the valuations in the purchase of Neurona and Econozco, I would say somewhere around 3 million euros.

More information in the web of Viadeo (in Spanish).

From Argentina and for the whole world comes Popego, a very interesting project.

Popego is a widget that we can include on our site, blog or forum and that will show our activity in social networks and other applications. A novel way of incorporating the concept of myselfonline in a widget.

For the moment, Popego integrates Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, Twitter and LastFM. As you can see, this option is a good way of integrating in a single site all these widgets that we use in our blogs and that show our activity in the social networks.

Popego is in the Alpha stage and one can only enter by requesting an invitation. I am waiting for mine :)

Seen in Serialblogger that has already integrated the widget in its blog.

Read the original article in spanish.