WebProNews

Tag: social networks

  • 15 Million People Have MySpace Mail Accounts

    Back in the summer MySpace launched its own email service called MySpace Mail. The company has now announced that it has surpassed 15 million accounts for that service.

    "Adoption by our users has experienced phenomenal growth, well exceeding initial expectations," says MySpace’s Rajit Marwah. "At launch we set a goal of 10 million accounts created within a year – we knew we were on to something when we surpassed this goal in less than a quarter."

    "What really makes MySpace Mail unique, and one reason why we think it has resonated so well with our users, is that it builds on your existing MySpace identity," he says. "We decided early on to automatically reserve our users’ vanity URLs for use as their MySpace Mail address. For example, since I had the URL myspace.com/rajit, the address rajit@myspace.com was already waiting for me when I created my MySpace Mail account. With an adoption rate upwards of 70%, vanity URLs were already one of the most popular features on MySpace, and leveraging them allowed users to maintain their identity on MySpace while enhancing this footprint beyond the MySpace network."


    MySpace Mail

    MySpace Mail | MySpace Video

    The ability to send and receive music and videos as attachments with MySpace Mail could be one of the main attractions to users. Music and videos are certainly a huge part of what draws many users to MySpace in the first place.

    MySpace’s foray into email drew plenty of criticism, but with better than expected growth, MySpace doesn’t appear to have any regrets about it.

    MySpace has also announced the beta launch of My Music 2.0, a hub where users can build and manage social playlists. More details about that can be read here.

    Related Articles:

    > 10 Reasons Social Media isn’t Replacing Email

    > MySpace Mail Arrives

    > MySpace Launches New Music Charts

  • LinkedIn to Roll Out Changes to Address Book

    LinkedIn has announced some upcoming features related to the way users browse their connections. The company says users will start seeing the changes over the next few weeks.

    There is a new browse panel, which allows users to browse their connections by their current companies, locations, and industries. They can also search connections by entering their first name, last name, or current company in the search box. Users can browse new connections and connections that may have also recently added connections by using the "Recent Activity" filter.

    LinkedIn Connections

    Connections will have mini-profiles that can be viewed, where users can see if they have changed current positions, added new connections, or sent them a message. "You can look up contact information like phone numbers, email addresses and physical mailing addresses," says LinkedIn’s Jatin Shah. "You can also add this information yourself by editing the contact information of connections in your address book."

    Under the new design, connections are automatically tagged with keywords (like "colleagues", "friends", "partners" and "group members") based on info users provide when inviting them to connect with them. Users can also organize connections into different groups with tags, and send a message to multiple connections at once based on how they’ve organized them.

    LinkedIn reminds users that the enhancements are in beta, and they can opt-out from using them as long as that’s the case. They are however encouraging feedback.
     

    Related Articles:

    > LinkedIn Launches Faceted Search Feature

    > LinkedIn Launches New Design

    > LinkedIn Celebrates 3 Million Members In The UK

  • Twitter’s Suggested Users Now More Personalized

    We knew it was coming. It was only a matter of when. Back in November, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told a crowd at a conference in Malaysia that the current suggested users list would be going away, and that it would be replaced by something "more programmatically chosen, something that actually delivers more relevant suggestions." Twitter has now announced the reality of that new kind of suggested users list.

    Originally the suggested users list was meant as a way to help new users, and it still is. The problem was that the list was static for everyone, and not all tastes are the same. Now the lists will be more tailored to users’ specific preferences.

    "Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet," says Josh Elman of Twitter’s product team. "Over time, we’ve learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we’re taking some steps to continue to improve this process."

    Suggested Users on Twitter

    "We’ve created a number of algorithms to identify users across a variety of clusters who tweet actively and are engaged with their audiences," explains Elman. "These new algorithms help us group these active users into lists of users by interests. Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists."

    I should note that our own Twellow service has had a feature in place that provides suggested users on a personalized level for some time, so if you don’t like who Twitter suggests (or if you just want to find others), you may want to consider checking that out.

    Twitter says its lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithm identifies new users who should be suggested. Others found to be less engaging may be removed. Twitter offers its own staff-picked list, and a special staff picks for Haiti list as well.

    Related Articles:

    > Easily Find Twitterers You’re Interested In

    > A Suggested Users List for Twitter That You Can Actually Use

    > Twitter To Make Suggested Users Feature More Like Twellow’s?

  • Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats

    If you run a Facebook Page, you may be very interested in some new features that are rolling out for admins. Eric Eldon at Inside Facebook has discovered that some admins are starting to see impression counts for each post, as well as the number of likes and comments for each impression.

    Eldon spoke with BrandGlue.com‘s Jeff Widman , who is one of the admins that has so far been able to access this information (doing work for a site called Mint.com), and he says he is able to check things like how much the news feed algorithm weights individual items versus the fan page itself. He also says Pages are seeing "many more" impressions than fans. Eldon writes (and shows screenshots):

    FacebookWith Mint’s Page, for example, it has around 45,000 fans but a single post has more than 53,000 impressions. The 8,000 difference could be fans coming from the Page wall instead of their news feeds. But “it’s also a little uncertain where those 8,000 extra visits are coming from," Widman adds, "as the Insights package shows less than half the 8K page visits since that post appeared. Perhaps it’s counting each time someone sees the News Feed? So multiple Facebook visits in a single day appear as multiple impressions?"

    Facebook Pages have become an increasingly great way for businesses and web sites to generate traffic as well as customer engagement. Facebook also recently launched it’s answer to Twitter’s retweet, which means that content pushed through pages have a much better shot at being shared more frequently throughout the social network (which is much larger than Twitter I might add).

    In other Facebook news, the company is getting into customized data centers and is now letting application users get notifications through email. This means developers can seek out your email address on an opt-in basis (not much differently than a web site would do).
     

    Related Articles:

    > Content Can Now Go Viral More Easily With Facebook

    > Pingdom Names Facebook "Most Engaging Social Network"

    > Facebook Gets Into Customized Data Centers

  • 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."

    Facebook app notification

    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

  • How Google Rates Links from Facebook and Twitter

    The first Matt Cutts Answers Questions About Google video of the year has been posted, and in it Matt addresses links from Twitter and Facebook, after talking about his shaved head again. Specifically, the submitted question he answers is:

    Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website. How do you rate links from new platforms like Twitter, FB to a website?

    Do you rely on links from Facebook and Twitter updates? Discuss here.

    Essentially, Matt says Google treats links the same whether they are from Facebook or Twitter, as they would if they were from any other site. It’s just an extension of the pagerank formula, where its not the amount of links, but how reputable those links are (the company uses a similar strategy for ranking Tweets themselves in real-time search).

    While Facebook and Twitter links may be treated like any other links, they do still come with things to keep in mind. For one, with Facebook, you have to keep in mind that a lot of profiles are not public. When a profile is not public, Google can’t crawl it, and it can’t assign pagerank on the outgoing links if it can’t fetch the page to see what the outgoing links are. If the page is public, it might be able to flow pagerank, Matt says. With Twitter, most links are nofollowed anyway.

    "At least in our web search (our organic rankings), we treat links the same from Twitter or Facebook or, you know, pick your favorite platform or website, just like we’d treat links from WordPress or .edus or.govs or anything like that," says Cutts. "It’s not like a link from an .edu automatically carries more weight or a link from a .gov automatically carries more weight. But, the specific platforms might have issues, whether it’s not being crawled or it might be nofollow. It would keep those particular links from flowing pagerank."

    There you have it. Matt’s response probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to most of you, but it’s always nice to hear information like this straight from Google.

    Do you like the way Google handls links from Facebook and Twitter? Would you do it differently? Share your thoughts.

    Related Articles:

    > Tips for Getting Found in Real-Time Searches

    > Google Makes a Second Real-Time Search Announcement

    > Yahoo Rolling Out Something Kind of Like Real-Time Search

  • Content Can Now Go Viral More Easily with Facebook

    Over the past year or so, Facebook has made a number of moves, which bring more Twitter-like functionality to the social network. Some question why Facebook would want to become more like Twitter given that it is much more dominant in the social media space, but Facebook sees the growing-popularity of Twitter, and likely wants to make sure it offers everything users want, to keep them around for the long haul.

    The latest Twitter-like feature to come to Facebook is the "share" button, which is pretty much Facebook’s answer to Twitter’s "retweet." The feature was rolled out over the weekend, and appears as a text link on posts in your news feed that stem from links ("share" is currently not an option for regular status updates, photo uploads, etc.).

    Just click "share" and you are presented with a pop-up window that allows you to share the link, and says "Via username" (although you can remove this):

    Share on Facebook

    Share on Facebook

    Just like that, you have passed the link on to your own friends, which may or may not include a variety of people who aren’t friends of the original poster. This in effect makes Facebook an even more valuable tool for content publishers. It will help content go viral, spreading through new audienceses.

    For some pros and cons of retweets, read this article. You can now apply some of these to Facebook’s share feature, because it works about the same (without the 140-character limit).

    Related Articles: 

    > What’s Not to Like About Twitter’s New Retweet Feature?

    > More to Retweeting Than Meets the Eye for Businesses?

    > An Equation for Getting More Traffic from Twitter

  • Is it OK to Say No to Twitter?

    Is it OK to Say No to Twitter?

    Over the past year or more, you have probably heard your fair share of people telling you that you need to use Twitter if you hope to have business success. It’s true that there are a great many opportunities and potential benefits to using the service, but do you have to use it? Well, that depends.

    Is Twitter Necessary? Tell us what you think.

    In a recent interview with WebPronews, SiteLogic‘s Matt Bailey said what a lot of people are probably thinking. You don’t have to use Twitter.

    Frankly, it’s pretty astonishing how loyal Twitter users are considering the service’s frequent downtime and over-capacity errors. There are plenty of other ways that you could go. In this day and age there are so many marketing opportunities online, it’s ridiculous. However, they require time, and if you’re going to focus a significant amount of your time on one, you better make sure it’s a legitimate way of getting results.

    This of course depends on the goals penis enlargement you have and the strategies you implement. As Matt says in the interview, "you need to have a consistent marketing strategy," and you should slow down and look at your marketing plan.

    I’ve written before about 8 reasons you need to stop ignoring Twitter, but perhaps that title could’ve been toned down a bit. Think of these things as reasons that Twitter could be a good tool to consider using, because Matt’s right. You don’t HAVE to use Twitter. People are still running successful businesses without it. That said, it does have some advantages. The 8 reasons I discussed in that article were:

    1. Twitter Lists
    2. The Openness of Twitter
    3. Building Valuable Relationships
    4. Traffic That Cares
    5. Staying Current
    6. Connecting with Local Customers
    7. Going International and Multi-lingual
    8. It’s Still Young

    Matt makes a valid point. Twitter may not be the "it" thing this time next year. It may still be as relevant as ever, but times change. I’m sure you remember when MySpace was the king of the social networks. MySpace is still around and heavily used, but it is often overshadowed in discussion by Facebook and Twitter.

    Consider your goals (here are some possible ones). If Twitter fits into them, use it. If not, maybe it’s not worth the time. If you want to use MySpace to meet your goals, you might be able to do that.

    Twitter is showing a lot of potential though. The company kicked off the new year with a bunch of new hires (including some former Googlers), and is really looking toward monetization and becoming more useful for businesses. With the opening of the firehose, a lot of new and existing apps are going to make it possible to do a lot of new and cool things with Twitter. Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone expects Twitter to reach a level of billions of tweets per second.

    Do you think Twitter is mandatory for businesses? Share your thoughts.

    Related Articles:

    > Twitter Starts the Year with Some New Faces

    > Stone Makes "Several Billion Tweets Per Hour" Prediction

    > 20 Goals for Business Social Media Use

  • Respond to Facebook Comments From Your Email

    Today Facebook launched a feature that some would consider long overdue. They now let you reply to comments via email. In other words, when you get an email notification alerting you that someone has left a comment on one of your status updates, you can simply type your reply in the email and hit send, rather than having to leave your inbox, go to Facebook and respond there.

    "One of the easiest ways to stay updated on relevant conversations happening on Facebook is through email notifications, which inform you about comments made on the posts you’ve created or commented on," says Facebook’s Tom Whitnah.  "These notifications—for comments on such content as status updates, photos, videos and Wall posts—allow you to stay informed about your Facebook friends’ activities without being logged in when you’re on the go, on your phone or at work."

    Facebook - Reply to Comments Via Email

    The addition of the new feature is simply an added convenience for Facebook users. It’s one less step you have to take to stay engaged in the conversation.

    If you don’t have email notifications activated, then this of course won’t apply to you. If you don’t have them activated and you want to now because of this feature, just go to your account settings and find the Notifications tab, where you can select the option to receive them.


    Related Articles:

    > Dissecting Zuckerberg’s Privacy Comments

    > The Marketing Worth Of Twitter and Facebook

    > Some Facebook Users Get New Design

  • Twitter Sees an Increase in Tweeting Frequency

    Each month we’ve been looking at Twitter’s growth in terms of new user registration and number of Tweets. Last month we saw a decline in the number of new Twitterers in November continuing a trend that began in July.

    In December, however, new Twitter user registrations leveled out. Number of tweets grew significantly, and the number of tweets from new users grew as well, possibly indicating that people aren’t just signing up for Twitter and not using it.

    These numbers were supplied by Matthew Daines, the lead developer of Twellow. He says, "Twitter surpassed 1 billion tweets for the month, a 30% increase over the 892 million tweets sent in November. They also surpassed the 100 million user registrations mark by adding 7.123 million new accounts, just barely reversing a negative trend in new user registrations over the last several months with a 0.1% increase over the 7.116 million registrations in November. The number of tweets per user registration jumped almost 21% over November to 11.5 tweets per registered user."

    Total Tweets in December

    Twitter User Registrations

    Tweets per User Registration

    "For the year, Twitter registrations increased almost 545% over the the number registered on January 1, 2009, while tweets sent per month increased in December 1,514% over those sent in January," notes Daines. "Again, I have no idea how many of these accounts are suspended or inactive, so the actual number of registered accounts might be less than 100 million, but the numbers seem to show growth continuing for Twitter."

    The numbers seem to suggest a good start to the year for Twitter. The company also recently made some new hires (including some former Googlers) and has some interesting things in the works, such as new features for businesses and the opening of its firehose, which will lead to a lot more innovation in Twitter apps. Things appear to be looking up for Twitter.


    Related Articles:

    > Twitter Starts the Year with Some New Faces

    > Stone Makes "Several Billion Tweets Per Hour" Prediction

    > Is it OK to Say No to Twitter?

  • Ping.fm Acquired by Seesmic

    Seesmic announced today that it has acquired Ping.fm. This is a service that has half a million active users posting daily from various devices by sending email, text messages, and chat.

    "Ping.fm is compatible with every single Internet device in the world, which why it has become so successful among thousands of users," says Seesmic. "Try using chat to update Twitter, and you’ll find it direct and seamless as you can post updates from gtalk, aim or skype through Ping.fm. It’s so simple and amazing, and it’s always on."

    Social Networks that Ping.fm supports:

    Ping.fm Supported Social Networks

    "Thanks to its powerful and simple API, more than a hundred applications already use Ping.fm to update all the main social networks and Seesmic commits to maintaining and improving the Ping.fm platform," says Seesmic. "Not only has Twhirl supported Ping.fm for about a year, but we are also preparing to open Seesmic apps with our own plug-in architecture so we understand and care about the developer community."

    A list of apps that support Ping.fm can be found here.

    Seesmic says that Seesmic applications on Blackberry, Android, Web, Windows and OSX via Air will all have advanced Ping.fm integration "very shortly," and will instantly support 50 social networks. Users will be able to update not only with the apps they are used to, but also with Ping.fm’s email, sms and chat gateways, the company says. 

    Seesmic applications have been downloaded over three and a half million times. Financial details about the acquisition have not been made public.

    Related Articles:

    > Seesmic’s Acquisition of Twhirl

    > Seesmic Befriends (And Buys) Twitter Client Twhirl

    > Update Your Status Across Dozens of Social Media Sites

  • Some Facebook Users Get New Design

    Some Facebook Users Get New Design

    Update: Some Facebook users are reportedly now seeing a new Facebook design that looks like the screenshots here. The design is similiar to the one below, with some slight differences.

    Original Article: Reports and screenshots have surfaced indicating possible further design changes to the Facebook home page. These changes would include an altered header with drop-down menus for things like chat, messages, and notifications (Via SAI).

    There would also be greater emphasis placed on the search box. It would be moved further to the left, and more into the center of the page. Such emphasis on search would make sense, as Facebook has greater real-time search functionality these days than what it once had (particularly since its acquisition of FriendFeed).

    Facebook Design tweaks

    Screenshot from French publication PCInpact.com (they have several more).

    Let’s not get too carried away though. These changes are only tests at this point, and may or may not ever see the light of day for Facebook users at the mainstream level.

    A Facebook spokesperson tells WebProNews, "We are continually experimenting with new designs on the site that are meant to simplify and improve the user experience. These are just a couple of the many changes we’re testing."

    Whenever Facebook makes design changes, there is usually some amount of backlash from users. That doesn’t stop them from continuing to make tweaks, however. In the end, users are likely to get used to or accept the changes either way. I don’t think the world is ready to abandon Facebook for the next big thing just yet.

    Do you like what Facebook has been doing with its design so far? Share your thoughts.


    Related Articles:

    > Facebook Makes Some Changes

    > Facebook Redesign Emerges

    > Facebook Responds To Users Complaints

  • Twitter Starts the Year with Some New Faces

    Just as many of us get back to work after the holidays, Twitter has some new people starting work with the company altogether. Twitter reportedly has ten new people (most starting today), and some of them have interesting backgrounds, which could have interesting implications for the company’s future.

    The one new hiring that is drawing the most attention is that of Bakari Brock, who has worked as a lawyer for Google and YouTube, holding the title of Corporate Counsel with both. Silicon Valley blogger Louis Gray, who discovered the new additions to Twitter’s staff, notes that Brock was heavily quoted by the media in late 2008 when YouTube was introducing e-commerce capabilities.

    Bakari Brock

    Other new additions to Twitter, discovered via Twitter’s Team List, include people with backgrounds with Bebo, Apple, Qik, Ning, TiVo, Cloudera, Ask, VMware, and 23andMe. One of them has also worked at Google in the past.

    "Twitter’s pedigree is getting increasingly rich at the expense of Google and other Silicon Valley tech titans," says Gray.

    He points out that these are not the only new additions to Twitter. On Decemeber 23, Twitter announced its acquisition of Mixer Labs, the creators of GeoAPI.

    Twitter is poised to have a  very big year as the company will likely start concentrating more on its own monetization and geo-location capabilities. With new hires with experience at companies like Qik and TiVo, you have to wonder if Twitter has some new video-related ideas in mind as well.
     

    Related Articles:

    > Twitter Takes SMS Tweeting To Australia

    > Twitter Gets Hacked By "Iranian Cyber Army"

    > Most Influential Twitter Users Named