BlackPlanet.com Now 4th Ranked Social Network

Big news for BlackPlanet.com as they are now the 4th ranked social network by Hitwise.  You'll note that for spot 4 and on down each site is getting less than 1% with top ranked MySpace getting over 80% of traffic.  Nevertheless, this is important news for BlackPlanet.com.

I knew something was coming after talking to someone with BlackPlanet.com in late '05 about their plans and then talking to a consultant last year and getting a sense of where they were at but had totally forgotten about it.  BlackPlanet.com has been one of those longstanding question marks in the social networking scene as in, where are they?  Well, here they are.

Via BlackRimGlasses.

Comments

[Rizoh]

Wow, I didn't even realize they were still around. I thought MySpace smoked them out or something.

[Hashim]

In my research, Blackplanet has always been a top 3 destination for African Americans - and that's what really counts for them since it's a niche site.

But here's what boosted them up in the traffic rankings - they went from 99% of the site behind a free registration wall, to the MySpace model of almost everything out in the open. Now you can lurk Blackplanet without registering. Same thing for Friendster recently.

The lesson for social network sites is that the MySpace generation is not as concerned about privacy as the first generation of web heads. They are ok with the general world surfing through their photos and personal details.

[Clyde Smith]

Having to register to browse is one of those things that personals sites have played with in a variety of ways. I think this is closely related.

The traffic most likely went up because people can browse without registering not because they're comfortable with being lurked. For a variety of reasons this is much more about registration barriers than it is about what the younger generation is comfortable with revealing.

Unless you have some other information that we're not working with here, you're drawing the wrong conclusion from this particular data, in my honest opinion.