WebProNews

Tag: social networks

  • Nextdoor, the Social Network for Neighbors, Now Valued at $1.1 Billion

    Nextdoor, the “private social network for you, your neighbors and your community”, just raised enough new funding to make it a billion-dollar company – in valuation, at least.

    The company has raised $110 million in venture capital from Redpoint Ventures and Insight Venture Partners. This gives the company a $1.1 billion valuation.

    “None of this would have been possible without the overwhelming support from our incredible members, city partners, and employees. They inspire us every day with stories of how Nextdoor is used to improve their lives and their neighbors’ lives. Whether it’s finding a great babysitter, selling a used couch, or coming together in times of crisis – we are honored that Nextdoor has become an essential lifeline to the neighborhood,” says Nextdoor co-founder and CEO Nirav Tolia.

    Alongside the funding announcement, Nextdoor has also revealed that it’s up to 53,000 individual neighborhoods represented – approximately 35% of those in the US.

    “Over three years ago, we launched Nextdoor with a clear mission: to use the power of technology to build stronger and safer neighborhoods everywhere. The response has been incredible. People truly do want to bring back a sense of community to the neighborhood and we’re humbled to be a part of it,’ says Tolia.

    Nextdoor is a social network for people in the same community, and new users must verify their location and are then only able to interact with those in their neighborhood. Think of it as an always-on neighborhood newsletter, as the company touts some of its potential uses like “tracking down a trustworthy babysitter, finding out who does the best paint job in town, or asking for help keeping an eye out for a lost dog.”

    Image via Nextdoor, Facebook

  • Social Network Screenings Could Harm Businesses, Shows Study

    As the general public has jumped onto Facebook and Twitter in the past few years, more employers are now using social networks as human resource screening tools. Though there may be nothing illegal with businesses viewing public social media profiles, that action could end up leaving businesses in a tough spot – and could even cause considerable harm.

    A new study published recently in the Journal of Business and Psychology has found that using social networks to screen employment candidates could negatively affect the company’s image with potential employees. The study also warned that in the worst cases this type of activity could have legal implications.

    “Social network spying on job candidates could reduce the attractiveness of an organization during various phases of the selection process, especially if the applicant pool at large knows or suspects that the organization engages in such screening,” said William Stoughton, lead author of the study and a psychologist at North Carolina State University. “Because internet message boards and social media provide easily accessible forums for job seekers to share their experiences and opinions with others, it is very easy for a soured applicant to affect others’ perceptions of an organization.”

    The study surveyed job candidates on the hiring practices of hypothetical companies and found that businesses that review social network profiles were less preferred. Stoughton and his colleagues found that study participants felt that their privacy was violated by such practices, and that some of them would consider legal avenues for restitution if they encountered social profile screening. Study participants also interpreted such a screening procedure negatively as a sign of how the company might treat employees.

    Though the study warns businesses that poor performance and high turnover might result from a social network screening policy, the study’s authors are pragmatic when considering whether the practice will end in the near future. Potential hires are advised to stop using social networks as private forums with which to interact with friends and to remove any damaging material from their profiles to protect themselves from hiring screenings.

  • Twitter Sending Out Invites to Select Android Users

    Twitter is sending out golden tickets in the form of notifications to invite beta group testers to a new alpha testing program. Instead of just relying on bug reports for test version feedback, Twitter will now reissue these versions along with a discussion forum for direct interaction between testers and developers.

    Back in August, Twitter invited official Android Twitter application users to join a beta testing program to test versions of the app updates before they were released. Beta testers were held to a confidentiality agreement, which limited a tester’s ability to voice their opinions and/or frustrations. Twitter has admitted that thus far, the experimental app’s functions have been a bit pesty (as in very buggy). Now, Twitter will be able to hear unfiltered sentiments from each tester first-hand with the introduction of an interactive forum.

    Keeping an open line of communication in the early stages of testing will hopefully cut down on these types of tweets after update releases:

    Kudos to Twitter for a commendable update of their update testing techniques!

    Images via Twitter
    Source: TheNextWeb

  • Twitter Tops Facebook Among Teens In Popularity Survey

    Despite claims from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that teens aren’t losing interest in the social network, a new study suggests that Twitter has become the most important network for teens as Facebook declines in popularity.

    The study comes from Piper Jaffray, who surveyed over 8,000 teens and found that Twitter is now, for the first time, the demographic’s go-to source for their social media fix.

    Twitter was preferred by 26% of teens, while Facebook held sway over 23%. This is the first time in Piper Jaffray’s reporting that Twitter has edged out the big blue giant.

    Just 6 months ago, Facebook still held the popularity prize over Twitter – 33% to 30%. A year ago, 42% of teens surveyed said that Facebook was the most important social network in their lives.

    This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard that Facebook is losing popularity among teens. During Facebook’s Q2 earnings call earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg rebuffed such reports, saying:

    “One specific demographic I want to address is U.S. teens. There has been a lot of speculation and reporting that fewer teens are using Facebook. But based on our data, that just isn’t true. It’s difficult to measure this perfectly, since some young people lie about their age. But based on the best data we have, we believe that we are close to fully penetrated in the U.S. teen demographic for a while, and the number of teens using Facebook on both a daily and monthly basis has been steady over the past year-and-a-half.”

    He added:

    “Teens also remain really highly engaged using Facebook. Now it’s also worth mentioning that these stats are for Facebook only. Instagram is growing quickly, as well, so if you combine the two services together, we believe our engagement and share of time spent are likely growing quickly throughout the world.”

    Although saturation is an issue – Facebook already has over 1.2 billion monthly active users – the issue here isn’t total users. Piper Jaffray’s study looked at popularity, not total teen users.

    Seemingly, in an effort to boost its standing among teens, Facebook recently changed its privacy settings to allow them to post publicly for the first time.

    Image via Maryland GovPics, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Faking a School Shooting Alert Is an Awfully Dumb Way to Get People to Use Your New Social Network

    Today, we all gather to nominate Bevii and this terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea into the Dumb Idea Hall-of-Fame.

    In order to promote their new startup social network, the University of North Carolina students behind Bevii decided to create an email alert to some “shots fired” on campus. Whoa-ho! Watch out! Facebook is dooooooown.

    Except the joke’s not funny and it probably freaked out a good majority of the students who read it. Well, unless they read the whole thing and saw that the alert was “sponsored by the social media police.”

    The email mimicked the official Alert Carolina emergency alerts that all UNC students would be used to, and hit their inboxes under the subject line “INFORMATIONAL MESSAGE FROM ALERT CAROLINA.”

    Valleywag has the entire email, and here’s what it said:

    Chapel Hill police are investigating a report of innovation which occurred around 10:01 a.m. Monday, October 14, in the general area of Franklin St. and N. Columbia St. At precisely 10:01am yesterday, in broad daylight, shots were fired on Franklin Street. The victim is being described as a blue, outdated social network.

    The current suspect is Bevii, a mobile, location-based social network only available to select Universities. Bevii, apparently, makes and values your relationships automatically based on who you spend time with. For more information on the suspect, click here

    Reportedly, over 500 UNC Students have already been affected by the victim.

    Sponsored by the Social Media Police of Chapel Hill.

    Apparently, the folks at Bevii haven’t heard that one thing about not even kinda joking about the mere possibility of a emergency event at a public university. I think it’s covered in the “What the F*ck are You Thinking” section in the student’s handbook.

    It’s a pretty tough launch error to overcome, I’d assume, considering Bevii just went live on iOS and Android a few days ago. Oh, and the fact that UNC’s IT department has apparently blocked Bevii.com from being accessible on campus.

    In case this didn’t turn you off completely, and you want to know more, Bevii describes itself as “a mobile, location-based social networking app that automatically builds and values relationships for you. Bevii uses this relationship information to show you all the content you want to see without all the clutter you don’t.”

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Google+ Tops Twitter in Mobile App Popularity

    A recent study from London-based GlobalWebIndex reveals that Google+ tops Twitter in terms of popularity with smartphone app users worldwide.

    The study places Google+ at number 4 behind Google Maps, Facebook, and YouTube. Twitter comes in at number 6, right behind Weixin/WeChat.

    Here are the top 10 in a nice infographic from Mashable. But what exactly do the numbers mean?
    Top Social Network Smartphone Apps
    Studies of social network usage often require a rather literal interpretation.

    For example, fans of HootSuite and Echofon might argue that the GlobalWebIndex study doesn’t appear to take into account third-party Twitter apps. If this is the case, do the study results really indicate that smartphone owners are spending more time on Google+ than Twitter? Or simply that more people are using the Google+ mobile app than Twitter’s own in-house app?

    The literal nature of social media usage studies is often cited when discussing results that, at first glance, show Google+ pulling ahead of Twitter in terms of overall users. As Media Bistro points out, it’s possible that the numbers of Google+ users are inflated because they include people who have a Google account in order to use Gmail or YouTube, but are rarely or never active on Google+.

    However, tying the GlobalWebIndex study into the great Google+ versus Twitter debate, if someone goes to the trouble of downloading the Google+ app on their smartphone, it’s probably safe to assume that they’re actually planning to get on Google+ instead of merely checking email or watching YouTube videos.

    What about you? What social network smartphone apps do you use most often? Let us know in the comments.

    Image credit: Google+ icon, chart

  • People on the Internet Are Made Nicer by Other People’s Niceness

    If a book, TV show, movie, restaurant, etc. is incredibly popular (I mean, everyone is raving about it), there’s a chance that you might assign it a positive rating too – even if you weren’t that impressed. Call it peer pressure, call it the sway of the crowd, or call it “herding,” but the fact remains: people are influenced by the positive opinions of others. People are also influenced by the negative opinions of others – we see this all the time in real life.

    But what about online (I know, that’s real life too don’t yell at me)? Do these same principles apply, let’s say, on a social media site?

    New research from MIT, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and NYU suggest that they do – at least for the positive persuasion.

    Researchers systematically altered the “favorability ratings” for over 100,000 comments on “a major news aggregation website.” They can’t say which one, but it’s one that has similar functionality to reddit (up votes and down votes). What they found was that comments that were inflated to have a positive feedback rating kept getting more and more positive votes, upvotes, likes, thumbs up – whatever you want to call them. It was a “snowball” effect that saw the positively-influenced comments receive a 25% higher average rating from other users on the site.

    Apparently, when internet users see that other people like something, they’re more inclined to like it too.

    But when it comes to negatively-influenced comments (those that have been downvoted into oblivion), the same sort of “herding” didn’t exist.

    From an MIT release:

    “This herding behavior happens systematically on positive signals of quality and ratings,” says Sinan Aral, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and one of three authors of the study. At the same time, Aral notes, the results “were asymmetric between positive and negative herding.” Comments given negative ratings attracted more negative judgments, but that increase was drowned out by what the researchers call a “correction effect” of additional positive responses.

    Basically, negative feedback tended to be corrected by positive feedback – a “rescue” of sorts.

    Of course, the implications of such findings could call into question any sort of online system that ranks or prioritizes based on crowdsourced opinions, votes, or reviews.

    “Our message is not that we should do away with crowd-based opinion aggregation,” Aral says. “Our point is that you need solid science under the hood trying to understand exactly how these mechanisms work in a broad population, what that means for the diffusion of opinion, and how can we design the systems to be fair, to have less incentives for manipulation and fraud, and be safe in aggregating opinions.”

  • LinkedIn Hits 1 Million Members in Singapore

    LinkedIn Hits 1 Million Members in Singapore

    While Facebook has recently been losing members in the U.S. and U.K., it has seen growth in developing countries such as India. While its worldwide membership growth is currently offsetting its membership losses, the loss of 6 million U.S. members this month does point to increasing competition in the social media space.

    One of Facebook’s largest competitors, LinkedIn, has been slowly building up its user base worldwide as well. The social network for professional networking celebrated 200 million members in January, and one year ago hit 15 million members in India.

    This week, LinkedIn announced that it now has over one million members in Singapore. The country is home to the social network’s Asia Pacific headquarters, which opened in 2011. Hari Krishnan, Managing Director at the headquarters, announced the milestone in a post on the LinkedIn blog. From the post:

    I’m especially excited about this milestone because I moved to Singapore earlier this year to take on the role of Managing Director, Asia Pacific and Japan, and it’s been a transformational experience so far. The energy and spirit among the professional community in Singapore is palpable. It’s been an honor to watch Singapore professionals turn to LinkedIn to build their professional identity, grow their networks and find the insights they need to be great at what they do.

    To celebrate, LinkedIn handed out coffee and cupcakes to commuters in Raffles Place.

  • Louisiana Looks to Ban Facebooking While Driving in Expansion of Anti-Texting Laws

    The state of Louisiana is looking to crack down on another activity that threatens the safety of its commuters: Facebooking while driving.

    Really, this includes any sort of social networking while driving like tweeting or posting photos to Instagram.

    The bill, Senate bill 147, has passed committee without objection.

    Louisiana already bans texting while driving, but this bill would extend the banned activities list to posting to or even viewing content on any social network.

    No person shall operate any motor vehicle upon any public road or highway of this state while using a wireless telecommunications device to access, read, or post to a social networking site.

    The bill goes on to define “social network” as “any web-based service that allows individuals to construct a profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and communicate with other members of the site.”

    You would think that this is a unnecessary addition to current anti-texting while driving laws, which already exist in the state. But the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dale Erdey, says that police have actually cited cases where they’ve pulled someone over for texting while driver only to be told “Hey, I’m not texting…I’m Instagramming!” Or Facebooking, or tweeting, or any other social network activity.

    He says the current law isn’t comprehensive enough to cover these loopholes.

    Sorry, drivers. We know that bumper sticker on the truck in front of you is absolutely outrageous. But your Twitter followers can wait to see it.

    This isn’t the only smartphone activity outside of texting that’s getting challenged around the country. Earlier this week, a California judge upheld the illegality of using a mapping product while driving.

    [Louisiana Senate bill 147 via The Daily Dot]

  • New Myspace Opens Up To All (Especially Justin Timberlake Fans)

    After a few-month-long beta period, the big Myspace redesign is finally available to anyone and everyone who wishes to join. To sign up for a new Myspace account, you can either use your old Myspace credentials or log in via Facebook.

    When the redesign was first teased back in September 2011, it had Justin Timberlake all over it. And why shouldn’t it? Timberlake is without question the most famous celebrity investor in the company. The preview displayed the new profile look, entirely new side-scroll browsing, and music player all within the world of Timberlake.

    So we shouldn’t be surprised that the new Myspace opens up to the world right as Justin Timberlake drops a new single, right?

    The new Myspace signup page features a suit and tie-clad Timberlake (looking sharp, we should add) and two buttons: “Join” and “Sign In.” The landing page also says that “Justin Timberlake’s long-awaited return to music is here…simply sign in to hear the first track from his forthcoming album.”

    Indeed, when you sign in (or sign up), you’re once again met by Timberlake. There, you can play his new single “Suit & Tie” ft. Jay-Z.

    Back in December I gave a first look at the redesign, which focuses heavily on music and discovery. I noted that it sports some elements from popular streaming services like Spotify or Pandora, but with a fairly robust social networking layer on top of it. It doesn’t feel like any version of Myspace that you’re familiar with – it really is a huge redesign of the UI. I thought that it looks pretty good, and functions equally as well.

    The question wasn’t in the execution, but whether people would jump back on the Myspace wagon. The network has been through a lot. But with Timberlake clearly throwing all of his weight behind it and tying the release of his new single to the site’s grand re-opening, who knows?

  • Facebook Slowly Conquering the World, Still Trails in Russia, China

    It’s Facebook’s world – every other social network is just living in it. Big blue’s virus-like spread has been well-documented, as the company has spent the past three years making up ground in countries like Brazil, Mexico, India, and more to become the most-popular social network in the world (and in a majority of countries).

    Social media analyst Vincenzo Cosenza has been tracking the state of social media across the world since 2009, and every six months he has put out his “World Map of Social Networks.” In June, he looked at 137 countries using Alexa data and found that Facebook was the most-popular social network in 126 of them, a truly overwhelming majority.

    Now that six months have passed, it’s once again time for another map. This new map does indeed show gains for Facebook, but holdouts remain in various countries in the East.

    As of now, Facebook holds sway over 127 of the 137 countries Cosenza analyzes. The major countries that boast networks more popular than Facebook include Russia, China, and Iran.

    What’s interesting is that the map now features the least amount of networks ever considered. As of December 2012, only 5 networks dominate the world: Facebook, QZone, V Kontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Cloob.

    V Kontakte and Odnoklassniki battle it out in Russia, of course, and QZone dominates the Chinese market. Cloob is the network of choice in Iran, where Facebook is more or less blocked by the government.

    Although Facebook’s only unconquered territories lie in Asia, Facebook currently has the most of its 1 billion+ users hailing from Asia.

    “One of the drivers of its growth is Asia that with 278 million users, surpassed Europe, 251 million, as the largest continent on Facebook. North America has 243 million users, South America 142 million. Africa, almost 52 million, and Oceania just 15 million (source: Facebook Ads Platform). In the latest months Zuckerberg’s Army conquered Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia and Vietnam,” says Cosenza.

    Here’s a nice little GIF of Facebook’s global takeover, from 2009 to the present.

    [Vincenzo Cosenza via The Next Web]

  • New Laws Banning Employers From Asking For Facebook Passwords Go Into Effect

    The new year brings with it a number of things, including new laws. One of those laws, going into effect in California and Illinois, seek to protect your privacy during the employee screening process.

    At 12:01 a.m. on Monday morning, a new law went into effect banning employers from requesting Facebook passwords from potential or current employees. The law is in response to a growing, and rather disturbing, trend of employers demanding Facebook passwords as part of the employment process. The argument is that employers need to know everything about a potential employee, and that apparently now includes somebody’s personal life on social networks.

    Of course, the new law doesn’t give you free reign to post whatever you like on social networks. The law only bans the practice of asking for passwords. Employers still have the right to dig through the Internet finding whatever they can on you and your habits. You might want to start hiding all of those embarrassing pictures of yourself at college parties. Public tweets and other online profiles are also fair game for the potential employer.

    Still, these kind of laws should receive national attention. Not every state values privacy as much as the next, and a federal law banning the practice would be a small win for privacy in a year where individual privacy is being stamped out left and right. New York Rep. Eilot Engel introduced SNOPA last year to stop the practice, but the bill has not even made it past committee since April of last year so chances of passage are slim.

    As of now, only California, Illinois and Michigan have laws on the books banning employers from asking for social network passwords. It could take a while for other states to come around to passing such bills if nothing is done on the federal level this year.

    [h/t: Daily Tech]

  • “Ghost Town” Google+ Boasts 135 Million Active Users

    Today Google launched Google+ Communities, which allows users of the social network to create and join large common interest groups complete with discussion, hangouts, and seamless sharing across the web. They also announced that former iPad app of the year Snapseed, which Google acquired back in September, is now available for Android.

    But inside those announcements, Google Senior VP Vic Gundotra also dropped some new Google+ statistics. Mainly, the network (by itself) now has 135 million active users.

    “Today Google+ is the fastest-growing network thingy ever. More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google (+1’ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search…), and 135 million are active in just the stream,” says Gundotra.

    So, Google+ has over 500 million users – but not really. When you look at Google account holders who actually access plus.google.com (or the mobile app), that figure is only about 27%.

    Still, 135 monthly active users is hardly a “ghost town,” which is a two word phrase that we all expect Vic Gundotra and others around Google are probably sick and tired of hearing.

    Back in September (when Gundotra announced the acquisition of Snapseed), Google claimed 400 million registered Google+ users and 100 million monthly active users. That means that Google+ has gained 35 million active users in about two and a half months. Extrapolated, Google+ is on a rough pace of 160 million new active users in a year.

    I know we make the “Google+ is Google” argument all the time to explain that every Google product is connected, and to think of Google+ as a standalone social network (as opposed to the glue that holds many other services together) is an egregious error. But back in September, when Google announced 100 million MAUs, Gundotra said “while Google+ is all about creating a better experience across Google, it’s also a destination.”

    So make no mistake – Google is very happy to see 135 million MAUs for Google+.

  • Your Instagram Photos Look Terrible on Twitter Because Instagram Wants You to Use Instagram

    Instagram has always wanted to be more than a place to filter your photos. That’s why your Instagram app has a news stream. That’s why you have the ability to like and comment on other users’ photos. Instagram is its own social network – not just a service to make your posts on other social networks more interesting.

    That’s why it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that Instagram just disabled its Twitter cards integration, the result of which is non-optimal, poorly cropped photos appearing in users’ Twitter streams.

    Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom immediately addressed the Twitter snub as he took the stage at the LeWeb conference today. According to The Verge, he apologized for the shift being “confusing” to users, but made no apologies for doing what he thinks is best for Instagram.

    Systrom said that pulling the integration was “the correct thing for our business to do at this time.” But he also said that Instagram and Twitter are peachy and that Instagram will always be integrated with Twitter.

    So you’ll always be able to easily cross-post your Instagram photos to Twitter, but they’re just going to look crappy in that format.

    Of course, what Systrom wants is for Instagram users to, well, use Instagram. Not just the mobile app, mind you, but Instagram’s brand new web profiles that they launched early last month. With the new web profiles, users can browse any user’s profile and see their entire photo collection. Users can also like and comment on photos straight from the web. When you think about it, Instagram is simply a “news feed” away from being just as much a web entity as they are a mobile entity.

    And not playing nice with Twitter cards is one way to encourage people that everything awesome about Instagram can be found within the walls of Instagram.

  • LinkedIn Looks At The Professional Vs. Personal Social Network Mindset [Infographic]

    LinkedIn and TNS teamed up to release a study called The Mindset Divide, looking at the mindset of global social network users.

    “On professional networks, the consumer mindset revolves around ‘investing time,” a LinkedIn spokesperson tells WebProNews. “For example, they are three times more likely to use such networks to keep up to date with their career over personal networks. While in such a mindset, they expect to hear from brands 26% more on professional networks.”

    “Consumers are as driven by a deep well of less obvious, but equally powerful, emotions when engaging on professional networking sites related to desires like ambition, security, achievement, progress, and happiness,” he adds. “This provides a fertile ground for marketers looking to build meaningful relationships with them.”

    You can find the full study here, but the company has also produced the following video and infographic highlighting the takeaways:

    LinkedIn Study on Social Media mindset

    In a blog post, LinkedIn’s Alison Lange Engel offers up a few tips for “optimizing marketing with mindset”:

    • Recognize the separation between personal and professional networks and the opportunities they present.
    • Frame how the brand helps users gain knowledge and success on professional networks.
    • Engage information-hungry influencers with exclusive content.
    • Align the brand with emotion by matching messages to user mindset – casual updates versus insights-driven content.
    • Build meaningful relationships by participating, sharing and listening.

  • Winklevoss Twins Pump $1 Million into Divya Narendra’s SumZero

    Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have put their hands into another social network, but this one doesn’t involve likes, pokes, or any photos of obscure friends’ babies. The Winklevii, best known for the part they played in the creation of Facebook and the years-long lawsuit that followed, have just invested $1 million into a four-year-old startup, SumZero.

    SumZero bills itself as “the world’s largest community of hedge fund, mutual fund, and private equity professionals.” It’s a social network for investors, where they can share trading ideas and research. One of its big selling points is its exclusivity. According to the Wall Street Journal, the site currently boasts only 7,500 members.

    According to the site’s cofounder, Divya Narendra, the application process is so selective that about 75% of them are ultimately rejected. And according to him, it’s still a personal thing. Apparently, Narendra reviews each application personally.

    If the name Divya Narendra rings a bell, that’s because this isn’t the first time he’s been associated with the Winklevii. Narendra was part of the lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, where the Winklevii claimed that the Facebook founder stole the idea for the site from them.

    After years of appeals, the Winklevoss twins finally settled for $65 million ($20 million in cash, $45 million in stock).

    The $1 million that the Winklevii are injecting into SumZero comes out of Winklevoss Capital, their personal venture capital firm that the two recently started.

    Last month, we told you that the WInklevii had just purchased an $18 million, 8,000 sq ft mansion in Los Angeles. Apparently, that purchase signified an expansion of Winklevoss Capital to the west coast. As a result of this round of investment, SumZero will also move into the Winklevoss’ office space in NYC.

  • Google+ Is Getting A Lot Bigger In Brazil

    It wasn’t that long ago that Google ruled social media in Brazil with Orkut. Recently, Facebook overtook Orkut in the country, and dominated the landscape there like it does in most places.

    Don’t count Google out just yet, however. New data from Experian Marketing Services shows some pretty impressive growth for Google+ in Brazil. According to the firm, Google+ saw a 5,750% increase in market share of visits (to all sites) between July 2011 and July 2012. In the UK, Google+ saw 476% increase.

    Instagram and Pinterest are he major stars of the firm’s new report. In North America, Pinterest grew 5,124% and Instagram grew 17,319% between July 2011 and July 2012.

    Take a look at this chart showing growth of the two networks in key countries:

    Instagram and Pinterest growth

    Bill Tancer, Head of Global Research at Experian, commented: “The growth of both Instagram and Pinterest over the past year has been phenomenal. The reason for their success is that they haven’t tried to be ‘another Facebook’ to reach consumers. Both networks are image based which people love – we all relate better to pictures than just words.”

    “For brands that are retailers for example, a site like Pinterest presents a fantastic opportunity to promote products in a compelling and organized way to a wide group of people across the world,” added Tancer. “Over the next 12 months, we expect to see a proliferation of niche social networks. Offering deeper functionality combined with a lower technical barrier to entry will mean new leaders in social media being created in a matter of days versus weeks and months.”

    Here are the other highlights of Experian’s research:

    Experian Highlights

    As far as Pinterest is concerned, we can probably expect to see a great deal more growth as the service is now available to users without an invitation, it now has mobile apps, and it is expanding into more languages.

  • Samsung Social Network to Launch Next Year

    Samsung is expected to launch a social network by early next year, according to a report from The Korea Times, which cites unnamed Samsung officials as its source. According to the report, Samsung is internally calling the project “Samsung Facebook,” and is hoping that its social network will eventually compete with Facebook.

    Samsung is reportedly using its Family Story software as the basis for the social network. Family Story is a Samsung application currently on some Samsung Smart TVs that allows up to 20 family members to chat and share media through cloud-based storage. A Samsung official is quoted by The Korea Times as saying a free version of Family Story will be complete and will roll out to Samsung devices by the end of the year. The full social network will launch in the first quarter of 2013 “at the earliest.” The official said Samsung hopes to spread the social network over all of its devices, including cameras, TVs, and Blu-ray players.

    At Samsung’s announcement of its new flagship Android smartphone, the Galaxy S III, the company spent quite a bit of time showing off the software it had developed and overlaid on Google’s Android. With Samsung beginning to become Apple’s major competitor in the smartphone market, it is possible that Samsung believes integrating proprietary social network software with all of its devices will ensure that its social network gains widespread adoption. However, Apple has already learned that sheer numbers alone can’t grow a social network: it was revealed today that Apple will be killing off Ping, its failed social music network, with the iOS 6 update.

    (via The Korea Times)

  • Shared Photo Streams: Apple’s Little Social Network Inside iOS 6

    One of Apple’s more impressive uses of their iCloud is the Photo Stream, unveiled with iOS 5 last fall. Simply, if enabled, any photo you take on one device is automatically pushed to all your other Apple devices – no syncing necessary. Not only is the photo stream useful because it cuts the cord, but it can be a lifesaver for anyone who loses one of their devices. It’s like instant backup for all of your photos. Not bad.

    But while Photo Stream on its own is pretty cool, Apple may have pushed it into prime time this afternoon with the announcement of Shared Photo Streams. That’s because Apple has basically just created their own little social network inside iOS, at the exact same time they add Facebook integration (funnily enough).

    “Now you can share just the photos you want, with just the people you choose. Simply select photos from the Photos app, tap the Share button, choose who you want to share your photos with, and they’re on their way,” says Apple about Shared Photo Streams.

    So, let’s say that a few of my buddies and I set up a Shared Photo Stream. Now, every image that we take and share to that stream will be able to be seen instantly by anyone using the iCloud on a device running iOS 6 or a Mac running Mountain Lion. It’s like mass-texting a photo without all whole texting part.

    Neat. But here’s the real meat of the new features: Commenting, Liking, and Notifications.

    Each person inside the shared stream group has the ability post comments and “like” every photo that pops up on the stream. Not only that, but each comments is pushed to stream members via picture notification.

    Apple iOS 6 Shared Photo Streams

    And this commenting system is native to iOS 6 – it’s not a feature of the Facebook integration. This is simply Apple allowing you to form your own little photo-sharing network with a few or as many close friends and family members as you see fit.

    And maybe taking a little bite out of Facebook in the process.

    We know that Facebook is all about the photos. It’s the world’s largest photo-sharing site, and that activity is the most enjoyable and interesting element of the site for millions of users. Facebook sees 250+ million photo uploads every day.

    But with Shared Photo Streams, people sick of Facebook for whatever reason now have a place to have a Facebook-like photo-sharing experience complete with comments and likes – with all of their closest iOS-using pals.

    Shared Photo Streams boast a couple other new elements like the fact that they don’t count against your iCloud storage – or the new ability to see your photo streams on the web. But it’s this comment/notification system on these streams that really makes my ears stand up, as they always do when Apple adds some sort of social features to a product. Let’s just say that it sounds a whole hell of a lot more useful than Ping.

  • Facebook’s Dominance Makes For A Big, Blue World

    Although Facebook’s foray into the public market has left many with quite the bitter taste in their mouth, the company can take comfort in the fact that at least for now, they are without question dominating the world’s social media market.

    Vincenzo Cosenza has just put out the June version of his “World Map of Social Networks,” (he does two a year, one in December) which uses Alexa and Google Trends traffic data to determine the most popular social networks in countries all over the world. For this map, 137 countries were analyzed.

    And as you can see, there’s a whole hell of a lot of blue on it:

    Facebook now rules in 126 of the 137 countries included.

    Per Cosenza’s analysis, Facebook has its largest user base in Europe, with 232 million – followed closely by North America with 222 million. He notes that Facebook is currently not the most popular social network in Russia, where local networks continue to win out, and China, where much of the same is true. In Russia, Facebook comes in third behind Odnoklassniki and V Kontakte. In China, Facebook doesn’t even crack the top three.

    To see how the social networking world has changed in three years, check out Consenza’s map from June 2009. It’s still pretty blue, but nowhere near as solid as the latest map:

    As you can see, Facebook has since swallowed up South America and Mexico, as well as India, Portugal, and Japan. Europe and Africa are also a bit more monochromatic.

    And Facebook’s growth is naturally coming at the expense of other, regional networks. Just count that number of social networks represented in 2009 – it’s 17. The newest map sees only 7 networks make an appearance.

    Facebook users might be getting bored, and analysts can continue to predict doom and gloom for the social media giant – but this map is visual proof that it’s Facebook’s world. And everyone else is just living in it, for now.