Bolt and Xuqa Chase MySpace

Posted on March 10, 2006

MySpace is the most popular social networking service but it has plenty of competition. Bolt and Xuqa are a couple challengers worthy of a mention. AdWeek reports that Bolt has added new features that make it a MySpace competitor. Bolt is also focusing on an older demographic than MySpace.

The new Bolt.com takes cues from hot social network MySpace, video-sharing site YouTube and photo destination Flickr. It encourages users to create and share their own digital content, whether it's short videos, snapshots or blogs. And Bolt is reaching beyond teens to the sought-after 18-34 demographic.

"There's a remarkable revolution going on in media consumption for those under 30," said Aaron Cohen, Bolt's CEO. "In the end, marketers have to go where the reach is, and the reach is migrating."

Bolt has fallen far behind top social media sites like MySpace and Facebook. From July to December 2005, its unique monthly visitors fell 60 percent to 1.1 million, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. So, it's banking on its new focus on creativity and older users to reverse that trend.

Xuqa.com is another social networking website. This one is just for college students and as Valleywag points out it is wilder than MySpace. It lists all the recent blog posts on one page and many of them contain vulgar comments. Valleywag also says Xuga recently raised $300,000 -- a small amount but possibly enough to keep it going for a little while.


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