Tag: social networking

Google + Brand Pages In Two Weeks?

Earlier this week, an announcement appeared from Google concerning product pages for the highly desirable Google +. In it, Christian Oestlien, a product manager for Google +, advised businesses to refrain from building product pages — which are akin to the Group pages on Facebook — for the moment.

Now, thanks to an interview with Ad Age with Oestlien, the length of that “moment” now has some definition, provided your company is one of the chosen few that are allowed to create these product pages. According to the responses, a limited number of companies will be allowed to create brand pages in Google +, in what is sure to insight the resentful ire of those companies left out of the initial stages. In order to even be considered, businesses are required to fill out an application, of which, Google + has received “several thousands of applications.”

The application process is only open for limited time — no definitive date was given — so if a company wants to be apart of it, now’s the time to apply. The interview also indicates when these brand pages could become active:

Ad Age: When will you decide which companies are in the test phase?

Mr. Oestlien: In the next two weeks we want to be able to reach out to the test partners. We want to move very fast. Our users are incredibly fast, and we have a responsibility to be fast.

While Ad Age’s article focuses on companies like Ford, MTV, and Mashable as potential aspects of the first wave, Oestlien foresees all kinds of businesses using the Google + brand pages:

We want to include everything from small businesses to individual contractors all the way up to the largest brand names in the world. What we’re really looking for is companies that on the one hand have a real rich history of being active in the social sphere, brands that have strong, loyal audiences and are proactive and engaging and who want to spread it out a little more.

Oestlien is also impressed with the way Ford — whose brand page was allowed to remain active — uses the Google + hangouts section, which Ad Age calls the “signature feature of Google +.”

The hangout is one of those things where it’s really just the beginning in the potential ways it can be used. For companies to be able to talk literally face-to-face to their customers on a regular basis will be incredibly powerful.

Considering social networking and all of its various uses, would car owners, be impressed if Ford/Toyota/Chevy/Honda et al, were to directly engage them on a social media platform? Would that be considered effective customer service? Let’s say a car owner’s carburetor failed in their Accord. How satisfied would they be if the first point of contact with Honda was via Google + — provided the owner was able to join?

July 8, 2011
Have We Got “Social Networking Overload”?

I remember back when I first started to join the social networking scene, I was a college student, and I had just created my account on MySpace. After that, I was hooked and got really involved in networking with my fellow collegians, as well as frequently updating the design and other cosmetic features on my page. Then, a few years later, my college had just acquired its network for a new kid on the block… Facebook. After I signed up for this new service, I started to think to myself “Isn’t this doing the same thing as MySpace?” Now, in 2011, we now have so many social networks, we cannot count all of them on our fingers and toes. With this premise, instead of Bing’s “Search Overload,” have we got “Social Networking Overload”?

Are there too many social networks? Let us know your reaction!

I know that there are social networks out there created more for centralized niches, such as LinkedIn (geared for business) and Meetup (geared for event planning); however, if you look at a large list of the most-popular social networks, aren’t they all doing the same thing in attempt to achieve the same goal? Even the public is starting to think that there are too many social networks as well:

@AbsarShah
Absar ShahToo. Many. Social networks. 2 hours ago via Osfoora for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

@jayadeeptp
Jayadeep T Pthere are too many social networking sites now. 4 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

While Facebook’s userbase progressed throughout the years, MySpace’s popularity started to head southward (shown in the graph below). As of this past Wednesday, it was announced that Justin Timberlake (along with Specific Media) acquired MySpace to help gain its popularity back again. The search giant Google also has plans for its recently announced Google+ project to be a new wave of social networking. This means that one social network will be resurrected, while another social network (from a major company) joins the game.

To see a full list of social networks (submitted by the WebProNews community), check out our directory’s Social Networks category. There are more social networks than you think, and one for almost every niche.

July 1, 2011
Social Networking Growth Set To Peak

The double-digit growth of social networks in the U.S. are on track to reach their peak, according to a new report from eMarketer.

eMarkter estimates nearly 150 million Internet users will be active on social networks at least monthly this year, bringing the reach of such sites to 63.7 percent of the online population. By 2013, 164.2 million Americans will use social networks, or 67% of internet users.

“With fewer new users signing up, social network users will be more sophisticated and discerning about the people and brands they want to engage with,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report.

While the social network audience has expanded to include a large number of users from Generation X, boomer and senior demographic, the youngest age groups are still the most active.

More than half of internet users ages 45 to 64 and over four out of five 12- to- 34-year-old online users will be regular social network users in 2011. The highest penetration level of all age groups will remain in the 18-to-24 age group, where 90% of internet users will use social networks this year.

“In 2011, social networks will need to cement their relationships with their users, particularly people ages 35 and older, in order to keep them engaged,” said Williamson.

“Marketers and media companies can contribute to this effort by creating compelling user experiences that make people want to stay connected to social networks so they can gain access to experiences, deals or content they may not be able to find anywhere else.”

March 18, 2011
LinkedIn Launches “Skills” Product in Beta

LinkedIn announced a new product today called LinkedIn Skills, which is designed to show areas of expertise, and who has the skills in these areas.

So, for example, you can search for iPhone and find out who on LinkedIn is skilled in this area. You will find John Geleynse, Director, Technology Evangelism at Apple, other Apple execs, Evan Dollm Cofounder at Flipboard, etc. The usefulness seems rather limited at this point unless you’re looking to recruit some pretty high profile people, but the product is in beta. If you’re looking for top writers, your top options are apparently Barack Obama and Chris Brogan.

Of course LinkedIn isn’t just about jobs. It’s about networking.

"With today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, LinkedIn is offering the unique ability to pinpoint top experts for a particular skill set, in addition to providing relevant and actionable insights about trending skills that can help professionals manage their careers," said DJ Patil, LinkedIn’s chief scientist. "Through LinkedIn Skills we believe we have a whole new way of understanding the landscape of skills – who has them and how they are changing over time – and how truly diverse the universe of skills actually is, whether it’s java or ballet."

The Skills pages do provide a list of related skills that you can browse, as well as lists of related companies, jobs, and groups.

"If you search for a particular skill, we’ll surface key people within that community, show you the top locations, related companies, relevant jobs, and groups where you can interact with like minded professionals," says LinkedIn’s Peter Skomoroch. "You’ll also be able to explore similar skills and compare their growth relative to each other."

"One thing you’ll find is that the universe of skills is much more diverse than you might expect," he says.

Users are encouraged to add skills to their profiles, join group discussions, and follow related companies for each skill to optimize their skills potential. LinkedIn also suggests "nudging" your connections to get them to add skill they might be missing.

LinkedIn currently has over 90 million members.

February 3, 2011
Video Viewing And Social Networking Continue To Grow

Consumers have been streaming more movies and TV shows than a year ago (12 percent and 5 percent more, respectively), according to new research from Interpret.

Netflix has significantly increased its share of the streaming video market, up 36 percent from the first quarter of 2009. Streaming continues to be the main way for viewing content online, as downloading TV and movies has remained flat.

The amount and quality of streaming outlets may have helped to reduce piracy, as the instances of illegal downloading of movies (9 percent) and TV shows (7percent) is well below that of music (20 percent). Consumers indicate the convenience and ease of use, as well as the lack of funds to pay for content, are the main reasons for file sharing.

Usage of social networks has increased 20 percent from the first quarter of 2009. Facebook remains the leader, growing 33% over the past year. Facebook has also been a boost for casual gaming, surpassing Yahoo as the most visited gaming site among casual gamers – 28 percent in the past month have played a game on Facebook (versus 21 percent for Yahoo).

"New media behaviors such as social networking and online video consumption have true staying power," said Josh Bell, Executive Director, Interpret LLC.

"No passing fad, consumers are already weaving these activities into the fabric of their daily lives, and it is all happening extremely fast. Moreover, consumers appear to be turning to legal modes of content distribution, suggesting consumers see tangible value in the experiences video content providers are offering."

Mobile social networking has also become more popular, with a 36 percent increase in cell phone users who have updated content or posted a status updated via a mobile device. Many of these updates are though mobile apps, and Interpret found 80 percent of apps downloaded in an average week are free.

July 19, 2010
What is This Diaspora Everyone’s Talking About?

There is already a lot of hype being generated for a social network that doesn’t even exist yet. I’m talking about Diaspora, which if you’ve been keeping up with the discussion around Facebook privacy and user unrest, you’ve probably heard name-dropped a few times.

Diaspora is a social networking "project", which has raised over $100,000 in donations so far. The project it the brain child of a few young guys who want to give users clear and open control over their social networking activities. They want to give users their own nodes.

Here is their explanation:

Diaspora: Personally Controlled, Do-It-All, Distributed Open-Source Social Network from daniel grippi on Vimeo.

"We are 140-character ideas. We are the pictures of your cat. We are blog posts about the economy. We are the collective knowledge that is Wikipedia," the team says. "The internet is a canvas – of which, we paint broad and fine strokes of our lives with. It is a forward extension of our physical lives; a meta-self comprised of ones and zeros. We are all that is digital: If we weren’t, the internet wouldn’t either."

The guys claim to have a "rudimentary prototype" of Diaspora running on their own machines, which includes GPG encryption, scraping Twitter and Flickr, “awesome design aesthetic”, and the "initial stages of connection infrastructure." OpenID, VoIP, distributed encrypted backups, IM protocol, and UDP integration are some of the things in the plans.

Diaspora is genius! Large companies have all our social data, let’s trust some 19 year old east coast college kids to fix it! Oh wait…Fri May 14 06:24:42 via Tweetieaviel
aviel

The team says that its goal is to get Diaspora in the hands of every man, woman, and child at summer’s end. If that’s their only goal, I’m afraid they’re setting themselves up for failure, but they do plan to release the first iteration of the project in September.

What do you think? Is Diaspora just the hype of the moment – a product of mass Facebook criticism, or will this become a household name? Hard to say without seeing a product. Share your thoughts.

May 17, 2010
Is Google Buzz A Flop?

Earlier this year Google added a new product to the already overflowing social-space. Its name was Buzz and it instantly found itself in the same category (mainly for the built-in Gmail userbase) alongside both Twitter and Facebook. Based on all the hype surrounding Buzz, it seemed we were getting ready for the fight of social-space supremacy.

Fast-forward a few months

After the initial hype-fest died down, and the dust settled, most of the positive buzz has dissipated. What we’re left with are privacy concerns, a rampant spam problem and copyright issues from users. In an effort not to be totally negative in regards to Buzz, it should be noted that Google has been very quick addressing / fixing certain aspects of the service.

Do you think Google Buzz is a flop? Tell us what you think.

This past week we asked the question, “Would you consider Google Buzz to be a flop?” on our WebProNews Facebook page. We were surprised by some of the answers left by our fans. My personal favorite comes from Steve Blaze; he states that Google Buzz is the biggest flop since the Edsel. (For those of unfamiliar with the Edsel, it was a brand of car from the Ford Motor Company with a disastrous history so therefore “Edsel” has become synonymous with failure).

One has to ask, why is Google having such a hard with social media? In many ways Google was a pioneer of social media, with their Orkut service (which is still immensely popular in both India and Brasil – but now the US where it counts).

Recently Chitika, an online advertising network, did some research within their network and found some interesting data pertaining to Buzz.

The report goes on to say… ”February 9th, 2010 – the day Buzz was launched – the search engines lit up with queries. The Chitika network saw about 1,500 searches that day for the term “Google Buzz,” approximately 15 times the number of searches for “Twitter.”

However, those searches dropped off quickly – on February 10th, there were 580 searches; on the 11th, 147. From the 12th on – only three days removed from Buzz’s much-hyped launch – searches for Google Buzz failed to break three digits, and in most cases elicited less than 10 searches per day. During the same time, searches for Twitter remained fairly stable, averaging about 87 searches per day.”

What are some possible fixes for Google Buzz?

Social media users want services that make there experience easier… not just another service that brings nothing new to the table. There are numerous things that Google could add / tweak to make Buzz more user friendly, specifically here are 5 things that I would like to see…

1.) Lists – Twitter has them and so should Buzz.
2.) Groups – Again, Twitter has them so should Buzz.
3.) Hide all comments – until I want to see comments" option.
4.) Comment moderation – block directly from the comments (like on FriendFeed).
5.) Content filter – Don’t show me any photos from Picasa or posts from a specific user.

Do you have any ideas to improve Google Buzz? Let us know what you got.

Something else that would’ve made this list is Buzz not pulling tweets in real-time. It appears as though this issue maybe getting fixed, a recent message from Josh Wills, an engineer on the Buzz team, explained…

"Okay, change is out everywhere. Here’s the scoop: we’re doing an experiment where we’re going to trust the timestamps on tweets (and by "experiment," I mean rolling it out to everyone, everywhere, all at once.) The net effect of this should be to do away with "tweet dumping", where you’re buzzing along and a whole bunch of tweets show up all at once because we just crawled them and push your page all around. Now, if a tweet shows up at the top of the stream, it will be because it just happened, or because a buzzer commented on it.

Personally, I really like Twitter, and I want better integration between Twitter and Buzz. My hope is that this is a temporary change until we work out a way to play nicely together that is beneficial to everyone."

So Google Buzz might not be exactly what we expected when it first launched earlier this year… but only time will tell if it becomes a major player in the social-space.

Do you see Google Buzz becoming a major player? Or will it just fizzle out? Tell us what you think.

May 5, 2010
Social Media May Get Much More Convenient for Businesses

As we reported last week, some significant news was announced regarding the open web, and the direction social networking is headed in. Cliqset and Status.net announced that for the first time ever, the users of two independent, public web entities are able to communicate with each other, without being on the same service as the person they are communicating with. These two services accomplished this using the Salmon protocol, a technology that’s already on Google’s list to implement with Buzz.

Would you find value in communicating with a user of a social network you didn’t belong to? Tell us what you think.

I reached out to Google’s own open web advocate, Chris Messina, to get his thoughts on this milestone and its significance for social networking, and for businesses.

What’s it Mean for Social Networking?

"I do think that Salmon is a very important building block technology for the open, social web," Messina tells WebProNews. "It basically provides a mechanism for what I would call ‘personal trackbacks’ or ‘social pingbacks’ — to borrow the blogging term."

Imagine: If Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and MySpace all implemented Salmon in the way that Cliqset and Status.net have. Users of any one of these services could communicate with users on any of the others without having to be part of those other communities. For example, if I’m a Facebook user, but not a Twitter user, I could respond to a tweet from somebody from my Facebook account, which they would see on Twitter. All the while, I do not have a Twitter account. They could then in turn respond to me, and I would see that in my Facebook account.

Right now, social network users can’t do this, unless they’re using Cliqset and Status.net, but depending on how widely this gets adopted, it could become more of a standard in the future, which would make for increased competition in the social network space. People wouldn’t necessarily have to join Facebook just to stay in touch with all of their friends and family who use it. If they liked MySpace better, for example, they could continue using that as their preferred social network, and still communicate with anybody else. As Marshall Kirkpatrick recently suggested, this would mean social networks would have to strive to innovate more, to keep users from simply moving elsewhere.

"This is a great demonstration of Cliqset’s larger vision of social networks being siteless, and we think it’s going to be the future of how all services interact and, more importantly, how users of these services interact," Cliqset told us earlier.

"With the ability to mention someone on one service and then send a verified ping to the recipient’s service, we get one step closer to decentralizing social networks in the same way that email was decentralized a decade or longer ago," Messina says. "For today, this means that if you prefer to use Cliqset, and I use Status.net — but I want to talk to you without signing up for Cliqset — Salmon will make that possible!" (emphasis added)

"Put another way, let’s say that I post a photo to both Flickr and my blog, and let’s presume that I would like to have one unified set of comments for that object — rather than two distinct streams of comments," Messina adds. "Salmon provides the mechanism to sync those two channels so that, once again, Flickr users can use Flickr, and my blog readers can read my blog."

What Impact Could This Have for Businesses?

Social networking has become a significant part of marketing, customer service, branding, and engaging with customers. It only makes sense that if social networking were to become more open in the way that widespread Salmon adoption would allow, business communication channels could open up along with them. Communication would improve.

"The benefits for business become clear then: produce quality content, syndicate to any number of services or aggregators, and then use Salmon as a way to host distributed conversations across the web — rather than in several disconnected contexts," says Messina. "This means more engagement and higher convenience for publishers — and a more familiar experience for content consumers."

What are the odds?

A lot still has to happen for social networking in general to reach this point. Right now, we’re really only at the beginning. Cliqset and Status.net are hardly representative of social media as a whole. However, Google Buzz, while certainly not as dominant as say, Facebook, will be implementing Salmon sooner or later, and you can bet others will follow. Kirkpatrick made the point that because Salmon is open source, any service can implement it without formal business relationships.

"If a substantial portion of the technical community implements Salmon, Facebook could be under a lot of pressure to do so as well. (As it was with OpenID, for example)," he says.

Facebook’s best interest, however, is to keep users using Facebook itself. Considering Facebook already has such a significant share of the population, you have to wonder how much it would really lose if it adopted this. It may also be in Facebook’s best interest to keep users happy, and that could potentially include tearing down a wall for users who don’t want to be closed off from the rest of the world.

Time will tell if this all comes to fruition, but Cliqset and status.net have shown that it can be done, and that’s an important first step.

On the subject of social media getting more convenient for businesses, enterprise software company Salesforce.com made some significant announcements this week involving integrating social media more into the enterprise. Read about our discussion with the company about that here.

Would you like to see social networks open up to cross-communication? Share your thoughts here.

April 10, 2010
NY AG Calls On Kids Websites To Add More Protections

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said today he is calling on social networking sites at aimed at children to provide more protections against the threat of sexual predators.

Cuomo said that the Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) law he authored has now resulted in the removal of accounts associated with at least 4,336 registered sex offenders from major social networking websites in the U.S.

At the end of 2009, Cuomo announced that Facebook and MySpace removed 5,385 accounts linked to 3,533 sexual predators from their rolls. Cuomo today announced that an additional 6,336 online profiles linked to 803 additional New York state registered sex offenders have been removed from popular social networking site.

Andrew Cuomo

"New York is once again leading the way in ensuring that social networking Web sites use the data that is now available, thanks to the e-STOP law, to keep kids safe," said Attorney General Cuomo.

"So far, thousands of sexual predators who had opened thousands of accounts have been purged from social networking sites. I am now taking this important protection a step further. I am calling on sites that specifically cater to children to screen users to reduce the threat posed by dangerous sexual predators."

The sites Cuomo is asking to use e-STOP information include:

AllyKatzz, BarbieGirls, Build-a-Bearville, Club Penguin, Girlsense, Neopets, Secretbuilders, Stardoll, Supersecret, Teen Second Life, Toontown, Tootsville, Webkinz, Whyville

Related Articles:

>Tagged.com Sued By NY AG

>NY AG Hits Intel With Antitrust Suit

>Dell Settles New York Fraud Case For $4 Million

February 2, 2010
Facebook Letting App Users Get Notifications Through Email

Today Facebook announced that it is giving users the option to receive updates from Facebook applications in their email. This would work similar to how email notifications do, but don’t worry, you have to opt in for developers to be able to email you. According to Facebook, they will not be able to access your email address without your consent.

"You can now use the rules and routing mechanisms of your email inbox to control how you communicate with applications," says Faecbook’s Arun Vijayvergiya. "This email option is one of a number of upcoming changes we announced in October to give you a faster and more connected experience when interacting with external applications on Facebook. You will soon start to see dialog boxes on application pages from external developers asking you if you would like to receive communication about their applications through your primary email address."

If you do sign up to receive emails from any application, you can also unsubscribe, as each email will have an "unsubscribe" link. However, if you unsubscribe, and the application doesn’t comply with your request Facebook suggests you report it to the FTC. That said, they do offer the option to report applications for violating guidelines on the application pages themselves. It is unclear if this will be effective for general email spamming.

"Some applications may require an email address in order to use their service, in the same way that websites might when you sign up for them," says Vijayvergiya. "In all cases, you will have the option to click the ‘change’ link in the dialog box and share an anonymous version of your email address, called a proxied email address. You can always choose to stop using an application or use a different application instead if you don’t want to receive emails from a particular application."

Facebook says developers will be held to the "highest" guidelines to help prevent spam, misleading info, and malicious intent, but the company still encourages the use of caution when communicating with apps.

As for future updates, Facebook will also soon start showing the option to receive notifications in new places. There will be a feature called "Counters" that will appear next to bookmarked apps on the user’s home page. There will also be new apps and games dashboards where users will be able to get app updates. Users will also soon no longer receive updates from apps in the notifications channel on Facebook.

Related Articles:

> Respond to Facebook Comments From Your Email

> Pingdom Names Facebook "Most Engaging Social Network"

> Content Can Now Go Viral More Easily with Facebook

January 20, 2010
66% of Government Agencies Use Social Networking

A recent study came out this week from the Human Capital Institute and Saba about government organizations’ use of social networking and collaboration tools. The study looked at the effectiveness of social networking in conducting government work, how agency type affects the use, and perception of social networking, and the future expectations and barriers for its use.

"This study looks at the challenges and opportunities faced by government agencies, particularly at a time when private enterprise is adopting multiple forms of social networking to help them retain talent, improve service, and meet competitive challenges," said Mike DeMarco, HCI’s Senior Research Analyst. "We were pleased to see that sixty-six percent of government workplaces surveyed reported using at least one social networking tool."

66% of all government agencies currently use some form of social networking – from blogs and wikis to instant messaging and discussion boards, according to the study. 31% of those surveyed have embraced social media as a means of providing a more efficient customer feedback channel.

Other highlights from the study include:

– Federal agencies (defense and non-defense) lead in using social networking tools for project planning and collaboration— while state government agencies lag.

– Fifty-five percent of government workers are uncertain about the future use of social networking tools.

– Security restrictions — chiefly concerns about the loss of confidential information — are the largest barrier to future implementation of social networking tools within governments.

"Real-time collaboration and social networking technologies are rapidly migrating from consumers to both enterprises and government agencies," said Saba Chairman and CEO Bobby Yazdani.

The entire study can be read here.

Related Articles:

> Social Media Will Not Replace Search

> People 18-24 Would Rather Give Up Social Networks Than Email

> Consumers Are Looking for Offers on Social Networks

January 17, 2010