Tag: social networks

LinkedIn Updates its Privacy Policy

LinkedIn, the social network for professional networking, announced this weekend that it will be updating its privacy policy. Starting on Thursday June 7, the company’s Privacy Policy and User Agreement will be updated for clarity and to provide LinkedIn members more control over where their data can be viewed.

Eric Heath, the director of legal for product at LinkedIn, announced the changes in a post over at the LinkedIn Blog. There are two major changes in policy. LinkedIn will now delete personally identifiable information obtained through their plug-ins and off-site advertising after 24 hours. This is likely a reaction to Facebook coming under pressure from European activists regarding its off-site advertising practices. LinkedIn has also “enhanced” its privacy controls by making public profile privacy settings for members also determine the information that can be accessed by search engines and third-party plugins.

“Ensuring more privacy and control over your personal data remains our highest priority,” said Heath. That’s probably the best place for a social network to prioritize privacy. As Facebook has found out in the past few years, privacy is not something that can be overlooked, and social networks have a responsibility to their members to make privacy policy crystal-clear.

The last time LinkedIn updated its privacy policy was almost exactly one year ago. At that time, the company allowed members to opt-out of being mentioned in ads for products they have recommended, and gave members the ability to opt-out of information sharing through LinkedIn’s browser plugins. LinkedIn’s privacy policy can be viewed on its website.

June 4, 2012
LinkedIn CEO Talks Social Network Success and the Future

After warming up the crowd at D10 with a funny video making fun of modern brand marketing, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman sat down with All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher for an interview about where LinkedIn fits into the social landscape. Weiner responded in his normal way – by throwing out quotable slogans and business-speak faster than they can be comprehended. Weiner is a PR department’s dream CEO, and he would place well in a business-knowledge quiz tournament against other tech CEOs.

“Today LinkedIn is about connecting talent with opportunity at a massive scale,” said Weiner. Both Weiner and Hoffman believe LinkedIn is still running on the same vision as when it started, and has simply scaled to massive proportions. Weiner boasted that the social network has over 161 million members who use the site. Oh, and don’t think LinkedIn began as simply the “Facebook for professionals,” as Swisher called it. Hoffman was quick to point out that his company started before Facebook.

Even so, the comparison of LinkedIn and Facebook is one that is hard to overlook, and the topic of Facebook’s recent IPO inevitably came up. While Facebook is under fire for its IPO’s poor performance, LinkedIn saw their IPO as a huge success. Weiner did not gloat, though, and compared an IPO to a wedding. “A lot of people can remember what the weather was like on their wedding day. I don’t think it has a lot of bearing on the success or health of their marriage.” said Weiner. “For us, the IPO was a stepping stone.”

Hoffman mentioned that he believes the high number of current tech startups creates a noise that means company valuations are going “up in a way that is probably unsustainable,” and Weiner said that business fundamentals, not a successful IPO are what produces success. The CEO certainly has results to back up his claims: LinkedIn’s first-quarter financial results for 2012 blew past analyst expectations by more than doubling the company’s revenue since the first quarter of 2011.

Weiner also summarized what is in store for LinkedIn in the future. He stated that the company is working on simplifying its products and services, continuing to grow, and localizing its products using more languages. As an example of the company’s localization efforts, LinkedIn India has been slowly growing successful over a number of years and recently hit the milestone of 15 million members. Weiner also declared that LinkedIn will invest in monetization products and invest in “everyday value propositions,” which he explained to mean products such as the new LinkedIn iPad app.

You can watch the highlights from the interview below. The D10 conference is a yearly conference organized by The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital website. The conference eschews presentations and marketing pitches in favor of one-on-one interviews with people at the forefront of technology.

(via All Things D)

May 31, 2012
LinkedIn Parodies Commercials in its D10 Interview

Kara Swisher’s interview with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman detailed LinkedIn’s very stable roadmap for building its social network while also making it profitable for investors. There were no surprises or big LinkedIn announcements, but the heads of LinkedIn did bring a parody video that shows the social network for professional networking actually has a pretty good sense of humor. In the video, television commercials for products such as cars and medications are parodied, while the most inane focus group ever imagined grades the ads. Oh, Weiner and Hoffman also make an appearance turning down an overzealous brand marketing executive. There’s a lot going on, but the dry humor contrasting the ridiculous parodies makes the whole thing worth watching.

Perhaps Weiner could give Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg some tips on keeping things light and funny. Zuckerberg is going to need a good sense of humor if he hopes to take all of the current criticism of his company’s recent IPO, much of it personal, in stride. It’s too late for Zuckerberg to ask Weiner for advice on how to successfully launch an IPO the way LinkedIn did, but perhaps some advice about how to double revenue over the course of a year and greatly impress analysts could still be helpful.

The D10 conference is a yearly conference organized by The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital website. The conference features interviews with influential media and technology figures. D10 tries to differentiate itself from other tech conferences by eschewing scripted presentations and marketing pitches.

(via All Things D)

May 31, 2012
LinkedIn India Reaches 15 Million Members

LinkedIn’s India division has reached a new milestone: 15 million Indian professionals now use the social network. Over on the LinkedIn Blog, Hari Krishnan, country manager at LinkedIn India, described the company’s excitement at how quickly India has embraced LinkedIn. He states that LinkedIn India’s member base has grown 300% since the beginning of its operations. According to Krishnan, LinkedIn India’s quick growth has been due to the large scaling in operations that LinkedIn has performed in the country over the last three years. From the blog post:

Our growth hasn’t been in terms of just member numbers alone. India is now the 2nd largest market for LinkedIn after the US. Over the last three years, we have also scaled up operations significantly. In addition to our Mumbai headquarters and two other offices, we have also launched a Technology Centre in Bengaluru, our first such facility outside of Mountain View, California. LinkedIn’s member base in India encompasses professionals and students at different stages in their career. It is individuals like these who are utilizing the various tools that help them engage with other professionals, gain insights and in turn grow their businesses or chart out their career path. The success stories of some of our members, have been outstanding. From acquiring overseas business to securing that dream job, Indian professionals from various industries have leveraged LinkedIn to further their career.

Of course, Krishnan also mentioned the new mobile offerings that LinkedIn has been focusing on lately. He believes that LinkedIn India can help the country’s economy and will improve the career progression of professional Indians.

15 million people is a good start, but when you consider that India’s population is greater than 1.2 billion people, it’s easy to see that LinkedIn still has a long way to go, and plenty of room to grow.

May 30, 2012
Friends of Wikileaks Social Network Launched

A new social network has popped up, and its mission is to support Wikileaks. The website Friends of Wikileaks (FoWL) will not connect members with friends, but will connect them with like-minded individuals. The goal of the site is to connect people who support Wikileaks and its mission. From the website:

Friends of WikiLeaks is a network of people from across the globe who defend WikiLeaks, its people, its alleged sources and its mission. We publicly and privately promote WikiLeaks and individuals and organisations aligned with the mission of WikiLeaks. This site will help you to join with people like you in your area and across the world. You will make new friends and new allies, care for treasured values and fight in common cause.

The site is now in beta, and users can sign up to become part of the network. Once the network grows to an appropriate size, all members will be given six “candidate friends” from their geographical region and six other “candidate friends” from around the world that speak their same language. Members will always have only 12 friends in their network, and inactive members can be kicked out of a group. Through these connections, FoWL hopes to create a sprawling, active, and worldwide network of Wikileaks supporters. The website has created a video to demonstrate the concept:

FoWL is not a subsidiary of Wikileaks and doesn’t deal with the dissemination of sensitive information. The network simply seeks to unite disparate groups or individuals who share Wikileaks’ values of open information and the exposure of corruption. How, exactly, members of FoWL will support Wikileaks is left up to them. A large network of Wikileaks supporters could be very effective in organizing action, and if the social network garners a large number of members it will provide a powerful statement of approval for Wikileaks. However, this could come at the cost of the anonymity which often helps Wikileaks thrive.

(via BGR)

May 23, 2012
LinkedIn Today Gets a Redesigned Interface

LinkedIn Today, LinkedIn’s social news feed, has just debuted a new, redesigned interface. The new, blocky style seems to take its cue from the new LinkedIn iPad app, and makes it easy to scan through stories and see who shared them.

Joann Wu, the senior designer of user experience at LinkedIn, detailed the interface changes over on the LinkedIn Blog. Wu states that a major design principle for the new LinkedIn Today page was simplicity. She used words such as “elegant” and “delightful” to describe how the news reading experience should be for users. From the blog post:

One of the core focus areas for LinkedIn Today has been to design a user interface that is engaging and simple to use. The default magazine theme layout creates a nice page hierarchy that allows users to quickly scan and identify the most interesting and relevant news and content.

Below each article is the option to share it or save it for later, as well as a list of which of a user’s network connections have shared the article. It’s also easy for users to customize the types of stories they see on LinkedIn Today. The “Customize Your News” tab, seen below, allows users to chose from dozens of industries and categories to follow on the site.

The design of LinkedIn Today does seem “elegant,” at least when compared with the jumble of the Facebook News Feed. The redesign is a good move for the professional networking social network, along with its recent focus on mobile. It fits with what LinkedIn’s goal now seems to be: to keep users on the site even when they are not actively looking for a job or an employee.

May 17, 2012
Is Google+ a Ghost Town? A New Study Reveals Weak User Engagement

To hear Google tell it, Google+ is growing into a major social network that will soon rival Facebook. The company loves to point out that more brands are adopting the social network and that the site now has over 170 million users. The question is, how many of those users actually participate in the social network by making posts or marking things with a +1? According to a new study from RJ Metrics, user engagement on Google+ is abysmal.

The study was conducted by downloading the public timelines of 40,000 random Google+ users. Of that number, only one-third of them even had any public activity. Of that one-third, the statistics don’t paint a pretty picture. The study looks at how much users post, how frequently users post, and how much attention the average post gets.

Google+ posts” />

The chart above shows how likely users are to make another post given the number of posts they have already made. For example, a user who only has one post has about a 70% chance to make another, after which he or she has around a 76% chance to post another, and so on. The chart may seem to show good numbers for Google+, with users becoming progressively hooked the more they post. The study author points out, however, that in charts of other social networks these percentages usually quickly climb to over 90%.

Google+ posts” />

This next cohort analysis chart shows the average monthly posts by a Google+ member as time goes on. The colors represent the month during which a user joined the social network. Though the average is still rising slightly, the declining rate in the average number of posts shows that user engagement is waning. This chart is very different from other cohort analysis charts for different social networks. The study points out, for example, a similar chart regarding Pinterest, seen below, which shows that platforms’ wild upsurge in popularity. Google+, which is slightly younger than Pinterest, shows no such surge, even at its outset.

Pinterest cohort study” />

The last graph provided by the study shows just how long Google+ users go between posting content. Users with only two posts average two postings per month and, despite more postings, the graph quickly averages out to around 11 days between postings. The study states that the overall average amount of time between postings is 12 days.

Google+ posts” />

Users on Google+ may be hesitant to post much content because their posts do not garner much attention. The study reveals that the average number of +1’s on a post in under 1, at 0.77. Post replies and re-shares are even lower, at 0.54 and 0.17 per post, respectively. Most users might as well be talking to themselves.

So why does Google+ have so many members who don’t participate in the community? The answer may lie in how Google recruits users to its social network. The company has begun to integrate Google+ into every facet of its business. From Picasa to Google News, Google+ integration is becoming ubiquitous in Google products. This doesn’t sit well with all Google users (Wil Wheaton for example), who don’t want their useful Google products tied to a catatonic social network.

Since Google+ is so integrated with Google, any person with a Google account automatically has access to Google+, so pure curiosity might explain the social network’s rising membership numbers. Many Google users must log it to see what the platform is and does, only to find it empty and never log in again. Another reason for the poor engagement could be members who don’t post, yet use some of the tools Google+ provides, such as its much-touted Hangouts.

Though Google+ is not in any shape to seriously compete with Facebook, some niche communities have found Google+ useful. The large amount of storage that Google+ integration give Picasa makes the platform perfect for the photography community. Also, many members of the tech community find the network a good place to connect with like-minded people while avoiding the bustle and noise of other social networks. For the most part, though, Google+ members simply don’t share much at all.

(RJ Metrics via Fast Company)

May 16, 2012
Not on LinkedIn? Here’s How to Start. [Infographic]

It may sound trite, but if you want to be hired in 2012, you are going to need a LinkedIn profile. The website tops all other social networks when it comes to finding jobs, and adoption of the site is still growing. The site itself has made some recent improvements, releasing a well-designed iPad app and purchasing online slide presentation startup SlideShare.

If you don’t already have a LinkedIn profile, however, the prospect can be daunting. You could simply transfer the information on your resume to the site, but that alone isn’t likely to land you a job. As with any social network, the key with LinkedIn is to be social. Make contacts, and inquiries to build your social network of possible employers or co-workers. Show off your previous work and market yourself. Using the site is much the same as other social networks, but if you need some help with the details, the folks at mindflash have got you covered. They have prepared a cheat-sheet full of all the tips you need to make your LinkedIn profile effective:

(mindflash via Daily Infographic)

May 8, 2012
Is The Internet A Danger To Local News?

The funeral bells have been tolling for some time now for the print industry, signifying the demise of newspapers and magazines as more and more news is generated for Internet consumption. As people continue to surround themselves with more digital screens – their tvs, their smartphones, their tablets – one would could easily argue that the relocation of viable news sources to the web would have a detrimental impact on the stability of local newspapers.

Still, in this world of the so-called global village, those who are invested the most in their communities are highly reliant on their local newspapers. However, it’s no secret that print publication is on life-support. Paul Gillin, who runs the aptly named Newspaper Death Watch, predicts that the online news industry will effectively kill off 95% of all major metropolitan newspapers in the United States. The Council of Economic Advisers, in collaboration with LinkedIn, recently released a study that shows that newspapers are the fastest shrinking industry in America.

In all, this is a terrible diagnosis for newspapers of any locale or distribution.

If you’re local newspaper went under, how do you think you’d find out about community-relevant news? Do you think exclusively online access would affect the way you seek out news for your city or neighborhood? Feel free to tells us how the change would affect you in the comments below.

A new study released today by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet reveals that while the print industry might be suffering fatal financial problems, most Americans still heavily rely on those sources. Of the 2,251 adults who participated in the survey, which took place in January 2011, 32% said the disappearance of their local newspaper would have a major impact on them.

The availability of local newspapers is a key component with how people stay in touch with their community. Further, the Pew survey found that the local news enthusiasts are more likely to be invested in the development of their community and strive to improve the quality of their neighborhoods and cities.

Curiously, the groups of people that tend to gravitate towards their local newspaper as a means for staying in touch with their community reflects demographic groups that have historically had strong community ties: women, older people, African-Americans, and regular church-goers. What’s more, those that follow the local news are also the consummate news consumer as they actively follow national and international news vigorously, as well. 63% of people say they keep up with news from around the world “a lot” and 78% say they follow the national news regularly, whereas only 35% of other adults say the same.

As we become a society with dual community lives – one in the three-dimensional, physical world and one online – the demise of newspapers could very well emphasize the importance of community blogs and online social networks. As of yet, though, blogs, Twitter accounts, and websites of local newspapers and news stations are relatively used much less than the traditional methods of tuning in to the 6 o’clock news or buying a paper from your local news stand.

The slow success of local news to online sources certainly isn’t for lack of an audience because local news enthusiasts aren’t some community troglodytes. Just go log into your Facebook account and take a look at your friends who live in your community and you’re likely to see that they pass along links and comment on articles about their community just like anybody else although, as with most technology trends, that behavior seems to taper off with older generations. The Pew survey found that, in general, Americans haven’t opted for one medium or another but, instead, integrated technology alongside traditional mediums like newspapers in order to stay informed about local news. With so many of us now enmeshed within some kind of online social network, be it Twitter or Facebook or some other similar service, you could argue we’re more disembodied from our communities than ever before and yet we have a reliable inventory of tools that can keep us in touch with our community as a whole better than ever.

The use of technology like the Internet and smartphones isn’t all that different among those that follow the news closely and those that don’t. However, the study points out that “the connectedness of [local news enthusiasts] is driven largely by younger” consumers who, as you would expect are generally more tech savvy than older enthusiasts.

As the print industry lurches onward into what appears to be its inevitable demise, it’s possible that online social networks will not only be the way in which newspapers can best serve their community but also the best way in which community residents can best stay in touch with what’s going on in their neck of the woods. A Facebook timeline for your local newspaper? Don’t laugh just yet, as that’s where this could all be heading

Previous attempts to aggregate local news into one online source have had, at best, tepid success. Most notably, AOL’s Patch was supposed to revolutionize the online distribution of local news but that venture has been plagued with business problems as it reportedly lost around $100 million last year.

It’s hard to say how people will get their local news once – not if – the newspaper industry coughs up its last breath. Online is definitely where we’re going and as options like Google’s localized search results likely become the norm, the Internet will be the only source left. And the Internet, despite how personalized Google wants to make your searches, is a vast and confusing and impersonal abyss that, try as it might, will never truly be a newspaper substitute – it just aims to take its place.

Are you already making the switch to online news sources as opposed to traditional print news to keep a thumb on your community’s pulse? What’s working for you so far? Blogs, RSS readers, simple Facebook pass-arounds? Let us know how you’ve been finding your local news online.

April 12, 2012
What If Facebook Looked Like Your Email Spam Folder? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Spam (the most often unwanted email correspondences, not the guilty pleasure meat product) it usually flagged by your email filter, and if it somehow gets by, it doesn’t take the most astute observer to recognize a claim that’s probably not going to hold water.

But what if all of this spam started to overwhelm you on your social networks like Facebook and Twitter? Neolane has addressed this with an infographic that asks the question What If Spam Were True? Basically, the hypothetical situation explored is one where all of those messages you see – “I won 4 free iPads” and “I make 500 dollars a day sitting at home for 1 hour of work” – are actually coming from your friends on Facebook. What if the brands and people on Facebook that you trust were spamming the hell out of your news feed?

What if you missed the important updates, the real life events of your friends and family, or even the important promotions and actions of the organizations you actually wanted to see, because “Cousin Ed” took only “six weeks to get that diploma” or every other update was about the “free iPad” you could win when filling out that survey.

They warn that companies have to be careful with the social media advertising, as to not drown out the stuff people really come to Facebook to see. As more brands begin to utilize Facebook’s sponsored stories (and the wide world of the open graph with sponsored action stories), we’ll see if our news feeds end up looking like the spam folder in your email.

Via: Neolane

March 19, 2012
The Evolution Of The Online Social Network

Any readers out there old enough to remember Bulletin Board System? Or CompuServe?

What about when ICQ was The Way in which everybody chatted amongst each other? Xanga was there for a minute, wasn’t it?

The long and strange journey through Friendster to Myspace to Facebook to the next heir apparent, Pinterest, has been a labyrinthine trek through a lot of different social networks, some of which you’ve probably even forgotten you registered an account on and some you probably missed altogether.

Well, if you’ve ever felt nostalgic for all those yesterdays spent online chatting with your friends, both IRL and non-IRL, the crew at Citizen Brando put together a fun infographic showing the long and strange trip we’ve taken through social networking sites. The infographic starts all the way back in the 1970s with Bulletin Board System, which was basically the internet before there was an Internet. Jumping on from there, you get to see all of the other sites, the rise-and-falls of many Next Big Things, and even some open-ended conclusions about what will emerge as our next fascination in social networking (I’d never even heard of GetLunched.com before, and it appears to either be in Beta so you’d end up on a waiting list if you sign up today).

Check out below to see what sites you missed, what sites you’re glad are gone, and what ones you wish had stuck around.

Click here to see a larger version.

March 15, 2012
Interview: uberlife Launches to Turn Online Connections into Real World Friends

With SXSW starting tomorrow, many startups are launching in hopes of becoming the next Twitter or Foursquare. One of the startups that shares this dream is UK-based uberlife. The company launched in the UK in January and launched its U.S. version earlier this week.

According to Sanchita Saha, the startup’s CEO and Founder, uberlife is a social discovery service that helps users extend their online connections into the real world. She explained that it is designed to save the back and forth conversations that consumers often have when simply trying to meet up.

Have you jumped onto the social discovery service bandwagon? Let us know.

Users can sign up for the service through Facebook or Twitter and can create “hangouts” around where they intend to be. The hangouts are similar to Google+‘s online video feature, but they are different since they are for offline events. At this point, hangouts are open to the public, but Saha indicated that the company would be introducing other privacy options in the near future.

The startup has also been likened to services such as Banjo and Glancee, but Saha told us that the distinction between them was based in the focus of the services. Uberlife focuses on real world events or hangout spots, whereas the others concentrate on people discovery.

“At uberlife, we’re very much focused on real world relationship building and the value in the real world of connecting people,” said Saha.

The service also includes an internal scoring platform called Connector Score that is somewhat comparable to Klout. Users earn this score when people who meet at their hangout begin following each other in uberlife.

“The Connector Score, for us, is a real indicator of which members of our community are the movers and shakers,” said Saha.

She went on to say that the startup would be launching a global leader board in the next few weeks that would enable everyone to see who the big influencers are.

According to Saha, uberlife takes location sharing to an entirely different level. Even though TechCrunch labeled it as “the next Foursquare, but for future real-world meetups,” she does not believe the two are competitors. In fact, uberlife plans to integrate with Foursquare in its next product roll out.

Saha told us the startup decided to launch around SXSW since the show is full of early adopters and passionate people looking to try new developments. The hope is that attendees that want to meet new people and “hang out” will use the service to do so.

“Any social app that’s worth knowing from Twitter to Foursquare… [and] GroupMe, Beluga last year – SXSW is definitely the place to be,” she pointed out.

The startup is already gaining some traction as artists such as Gabriel & Dresden and Shiny Toy Guns are using it to connect with fans at SXSW. In addition, Saha told us that various brands are using it as well to help build relationships with their customers. She said that companies are also finding that uberlife is useful in connecting customers with each other, which helps to build community efforts.

Uberlife plans to build a revenue model utilizing the influencers from the upcoming global leader board. Saha said that the company is working to create a platform that would connect small to medium-sized businesses to the influencers.

Do you think uberlife has the potential to be the next hot startup? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

March 8, 2012
MySpace Gains A Million New Sign-Ups: Good Sign

Make all the MySpace jokes you want, but it still has a lot of users. You may not want to count it out just yet.

In fact, MySpace has gained over a million sign-ups since launching its new music player in December, the company announced today. The player is drawing 40,000 sign-ups a day in the U.S., on average.

“The numbers tell an amazing story of strong momentum and dramatic change for Myspace,” says CEO Tim Vanderhook. “And the one million-plus new user accounts we’ve seen in the last 30 days validates our approach. Myspace is building meaningful social entertainment experience around content, where consumers can share and discover the music they love. Consumers are getting excited about Myspace again – a testament to a great music product.”

It probably helps that the player comes with free access to 42 million songs. Here’s a closer look at the player:

It probably also helps that it comes with Facebook connectivity.

MySpace has expressed, since relaunching, that it aspires to sort of be the Hulu for music. A million new sign-ups since December is not a bad start.

Last month, Panasonic and MySpace revealed a new partnership that will bring a MySpace TV channel to connected devices. This could further help the new MySpace grow.

Perhaps its new owners won’t “screw up” with MySpace as badly as News Corp. did. Also consider this (from late December):

February 13, 2012
Zuckerberg Assesses The Google+ Threat

Despite whether or not anyone from Facebook truly sees Google+ as a threat, or if anyone at Google even has it in their mind that the new social network is in direct competition with the veteran service – it’s always interesting to hear one side talk about the other.

In the area of Mark Zuckerberg talking about Google+, we haven’t really had a lot of work with. A couple of weeks ago, Zuckerberg told Charlie Rose that Google was building “it’s own little Facebook.” Google’s Bradley Horowitz later fired back that they were “delighted to be underestimated.” Hardcore, right? This type of intense combat can only happen in the high-stakes world of social media.

Now, we get another soundbite from Zuckerberg on Google+. This one comes from a BBC profile that aired on Sunday, where Facebook’s CEO was asked if he sees Google+ as a threat. Here’s the response:

Yeah Google’s a great company and I think we want to look at and learn from everything that they do. But at the same time, people have shared a lot on Facebook and have already told a lot of their life story on Facebook. And we think that we have by far better tools for doing that.

In that short answer, Zuckerberg outlines the main reason why Google+ would fight an almost impossibly uphill battle in directly challenging Facebook on pure, standalone social grounds: Facebook is just too engrained in everything that people do online. It’s been on the block for so long that it’s nearly impossible for people to disconnect their online (and sometimes real-life) presence from the site. Google+ is undeniably late to the party.

But of course, Google is not even trying to topple the mighty giant, if you listen to Google. They have been hammering home the “Google+ is Google” mantra for the past few months. The aforementioned Horowitz recently said that “Google+ is not a siloed product. It is not divorced from the rest of Google, instead it is a new way of using all the Google services that you know and love.”

Or think of it this way: Google says they don’t want Google+ to be a standalone site – just somewhere you go to be on a social network.

“It is a platform which allows us to bring social elements into all the services and products that we offer. So you have seen YouTube come into Google+; you’ve seen Google+ with ‘direct connect’ go into our search business. We are trying to make sure we use social signals across all of our products… It’s not just about getting people together on one site and calling it a social network,” said CBO Nikesh Arora earlier this month.

Google might have a different strategy for Google+ than simply replacing Facebook, but when you think about how much influence Google yields over the web, you can’t imagine that Mark Zuckerberg lets their social initiative stray too far from his mind.

[We previously had the entire interview embedded from YouTube, but it has since been yanked due to copyright claims from the BBC. Those of you in the UK can watch it on the BBC site]

December 5, 2011
Email Shows Your Hierarchy of Friends

Following the recent news that Facebook reveals about four degrees of separation among networks of friends, new research has come out demonstrating a similar phenomenon at work within a person’s email. Northwestern University researchers Stefan Wuchty and Brian Uzzi have published a new study indicating that the contents of your email inbox reflect your real life ties to the people in your life.

Using email data collected from nearly 1.5 million non-distribution list emails from 1,052 managers of a “typical professional services company that offers various forms of consulting to services and clients,” Wuchty and Uzzi were able to distinguish that variables such as response time and even quick assessments of emails reflected self-reported ties of “real life” social networks. Further, the study demonstrates that, despite what curmudgeons may drone on and on about, electronic communication really hasn’t changed the way we interact with each other at all.

Of key importance is the understanding that e-communication mirrors patterns of face-to-face communication in regard to different types of relationships while the availability of electronic communication channels drastically reduced communication costs and extended our potential number of and reach to contacts, the email dynamics we observed suggests that fundamental patterns of friendship and professional connections continue to operation in their classical fashion. How these dynamics aggregate to change human dynamics is putatively dependent on the contextual basis of our findings.

Another telling observation to come from this research is that, similar to the study that Facebook conducted, email reveals approximately a similar degree of separation between participants in the study:

Pretty fascinating stuff, given all the recent decries that email is outdated or, worse, dead.

December 1, 2011
Is Facebook Still Cool?

I re-watched The Social Network the other night, and it’s funny to think about how much Facebook has grown even in the short time since that film was released. Remember the marketing campaign? “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

Much was made about the “cool” factor of Facebook as it was founded. Is it still cool today? Share your thoughts.

Now, it’s more like 800 million (a new report says Facebook had 721 million active users earlier this year). The valuation is much higher than reported at the end of the film. That number escapes me at the moment, and I don’t have the movie in front of me, but I know it’s ridiculously higher now. Recent estimates had it exceeding $80 billion.

Advertising

As the story goes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hesitant to put ads on Facebook when it was getting started. He wanted to see it what it could become first. He didn’t want it to lose that “cool” factor, which was also helped by its initial exclusivity to students of certain universities. A lot has changed since those days. Now, there are not only ads, but a huge ad platform that lets advertisers target people based on their likes and interests. And with “Sponsored Stories,” something you may have “liked” months ago could show up next to one of your friends’ news feeds as a “sponsored story”. For example, my colleague Josh told me he saw a sponsored story last night telling him that I like “Bing.” These stories are now much more in your face.

But that’s business. Facebook needs to monetize this enormous group of people it has, and that’s what it’s doing. I can hardly knock them for that. But not everyone understands or cares. Why do you think ad blockers are so popular?

Too Many Friends?

According to Facebook, there are 69 billion friendships among their active users. See the four degrees of Facebook.

According to a poll from Poll Position, 14% of Facebook users think they have too many Facebook friends, compared to 9% who said they want more (granted, the rest are ok with the number they currently have).

Too many friends can breed information overload. And if you’re friends with everyone you’ve ever known, there’s a good chance some of them are annoying you – especially if they invite you to a lot of apps and games.

There was even a National Unfriend Day created.

Shopping and Bill Pay

According to Gartner Research (as depicted in this infographic from MoonToast (via AllFacebook), companies will generate 50% of web sales via their social presence and mobile apps. It stands to reason that Facebook will be a major factor in that social presence.

However, The Street recently reported on a survey from BillingViews, finding that 87% of people would not be comfortable buying something through Facebook. On top of that, 94% said they wouldn’t pay a bill through Facebook. Security was cited as a main concern.

Sharing

Molly Wood at CNET put out a popular article the other day that’s generated a great deal of discussion. It’s called “How Facebook is ruining Sharing”. She says, “The slow spread of Facebook’s Open Graph scheme is totally ruining sharing. Here’s an excerpt, which basically sums up her point:

If your friends are using an app like The Guardian or The Washington Post’s new Social Reader, you’ll get an intercept asking you to authorize the original site’s app so that you can read the story. And, of course, so that every story you read will start being shared automatically on Facebook, thanks to the magic of Open Graph!

Now, it’s tempting to blame your friends for installing or using these apps in the first place, and the publications like the Post that are developing them and insisting you view their stories that way. But don’t be distracted. Facebook is to blame here. These apps and their auto-sharing (and intercepts) are all part of the Open Graph master plan.

You’ve no doubt seen plenty of complaints about the “frictionless sharing” that comes with an app like Spotify, where users can essentially spam their friends’ tickers with every song they listen to. There are ways to avoid this, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying to those who find it so. Keep in mind, that this “frictionless sharing” thing is really just getting started. The Timeline hasn’t even been rolled out yet.

Privacy

Privacy has long been a concern with Facebook for many users, though it’s hardly kept the social network from gaining momentum. After the last f8, when Facebook launched the new Open Graph, more concerns followed.

The Poynter Institute said Facebook and news organizations are pushing the boundaries of online privacy and that “Facebook again my have gone too far in its quest to make privacy obsolete and that this time some news organizations could get burned by going along with it.”

Poynter Digital Media Fellow Jeff Sonderman called out new Facebook apps like the Washington Post’s Social Reader, and similar offerings from The Guardian and The Daily, as well as Yahoo News, which has readers sign up to have their reading activity streamed to their Facebook profile.

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore talked about this in another article saying that he saw on Facebook that someone he knows professionally was reading articles with titles like: “Heather Morris on Breast Implants,” and “Perrey Reeves Shows Off Bikini Body (PHOTO).”

It’s not that these things are so bad, it’s just a matter of do you want everybody you know to know everything you read?

And there’s that whole tracking thing.

Take This Lollipop had a fun look at Facebook privacy:

Recent reports indicate that Facebook is close to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that would at least keep Facebook from making privacy-related changes that you have to opt-out, and would instead make it so users had to opt in for the changes to take effect.

Spam

Farmville requests and invites to events you’ll never attend are one thing. Getting spammed by your friends’ music listening is another. And getting pornographic images and pictures of dismemberments in your news feed is another still. Last week, there was a highly publicized attack on Facebook which spawned such images, and proved that Facebook is not invincible to such a thing.

Design

Facebook has had many design changes over the years, and usually when there’s a major overhaul, a lot of people are infuriated. That was no different with the last big change, which altered the way the news feed worked and added the ticker. Some people liked it from the start, and others have no doubt grown to accept it, but a lot of people miss the old Facebook, or other older incarnations. Design changes are a natural part of the evolution of any site, but when Facebook does a redesign, it has enormous ramifications for people’s perception of the site, because it has so many users, and it’s where so many spend such a large amount of their time online. Facebook gets points either way for bringing back the News Feed option to view by most recent.

Android

Facebook is pissing off Android users by not giving its Android app the attention it deserves. Facebook’s Android app is buggy at best. The company recently launched a new and improve iOS app, while leaving the Android app largely untouched. It doesn’t have the design or features of its iPhone counterpart, and it’s pretty bad about notifications.

This is a problem. According to Google, 200 million Android devices have been activated worldwide. I wonder how many of those people use Facebook. They’re also adding 550,000 new devices each day, Google also said.

Wrapping Up

I’ll be the first to admit that Facebook has changed the world, and has done a lot of amazing things. No company is perfect, and one can’t help but be impressed by the tremendous growth Facebook has seen in users, functionality and valuation. It really is astounding. They’ve forced other major Internet players to try and compete with them.

That, however, is one reason Facebook can’t afford to alienate users. While Facebook may still be the biggest social network on the block (by far), others aren’t backing down. Twitter seems to be gaining hipness with the youngsters, and is getting better and better, while being largely embraced by all facets of media. Google has a massive empire of users across its product list, and is integrating Google+ into all of those products.

Is Facebook becoming less cool? Tell us what you think.

November 22, 2011
Should Google Be Worried about Google+?

What’s up with Google+? One day, reports say how much the service has grown, and the very next day, they say just the opposite. The unfavorable reports about the social network have even gone to the extreme to call it dead.

Do you use Google+ regularly? We’d love to know.

While the fact of declaring it “dead” is debatable, there are some definite signs that should cause Google to be concerned. For instance, Dan Reimold, the Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Tampa, wrote a post entitled “Google+: Social Media Upstart ‘Worse Than a Ghost Town,’” in which he not only called the social network dead, but he also gave a bleak prediction:

“At worst, in the coming months, it will literally fade away to nothing or exist as Internet plankton,” he wrote. “At best, it will be to social networking what Microsoft’s Bing is to online search: perfectly adequate; fun to stumble onto once in awhile; and completely irrelevant to the mainstream web.”

In an interview with WebProNews not long ago, Reimold told us that he came to this conclusion after he realized that he wasn’t finding anything on Google+ that was more interesting or different from the information he was already finding on his other social networks.

Also, a chart released by Michael DeGusta showing the inactivity of Google’s own management on Google+ has done nothing but add to this negative outlook. However, since this chart was released, Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, has begun to use the service.

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The biggest blow for Google and its social network was probably last week when Steve Yegge, one of its own software engineers, accidentally published a not-so-flattering post about Google+ on the network itself. In the post, Yegge essentially pointed out what his employer was doing wrong with Google+, making statements such as:

“Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it.”

And this: “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.”

Yegge’s post was intended to only go out to his Google circle but was instead shared publicly.

More recently, data analytics firm Chitika released some research that gives Google yet another reason to be concerned. The company looked at Google+ before and after its public launch in late September. Even though Experian Hitwise reported that Google+ grew 1269 percent in the week following its public launch, Chitika’s data shows this surge was only temporary.

Gabe Donnini, an analyst with Chitika, explained to us that the traffic to Google+ grew to peak levels immediately after the public launch but then fell over 60 percent shortly after.

“We just looked at the stats to investigate this trend, and as it turned out, there was a sharp spike and then a sharp decline almost immediately after the days following Google+‘s public beta,” he said.

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Donnini told us that he believed the traffic spike was driven by the publicity surrounding the public launch. However, Chitika decided to investigate further and extend the research period beyond the week after Google+ opened publicly. What it found was that the downward trend actually got worse. According to its research, the largest drop in traffic for Google+ was more than 70 percent.

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Last week in Google’s Q3 earnings report, CEO Larry Page proudly said that Google+ had surpassed 40 million users.

“Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark,” he said. “People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!”

This is a large number especially considering that the network has only existed for a few months. But, as Chitika data shows, it doesn’t mean that all these users are active.

According to Donnini, the lack of activity from users is due to many reasons. First of all, users can’t import or sync their existing networks into their Google+ network.

“There’s very little incentive to share if you don’t have anyone to share with,” he said.

He also believes that users are inactive because it took Google a long time to make its API available to developers. As he explained, a large part of the success of social networks is due to the network of services that are built on the overall platform.

“By not providing a developer API in which a useful network of services could be built for their users, Google basically made it much harder for their users to find a way to (a) stay on the site, and (b) they kind of lowered the utility of Google+ as a site for their new userbase,” he said.

He also pointed out, “They don’t need to become Facebook, they need to become what Facebook is going to become.”

Interestingly, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Google+ czar Vic Gundotra spoke about the social network at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday. Both indicated they were pleased with the progress of Google+, and Brin even said, “I’m not a social person myself… [but] Google+, I instantly found compelling.”

Gundotra also said that Google+ would allow support in the near future for pseudonyms as well as for Google Apps users to be able to log into Google+ with their accounts. He also indicated that brand pages would be coming too, but not as quickly as the other features.

Are these additions enough to save Google+?

October 20, 2011
Who Should Be More Concerned About Losing Users: Facebook or Google?
It has seemed fairly clear since Google launched Google+ that Facebook was worried to at least some extent. That’s not to say Facebook thinks it’s on the cusp of becoming the next Myspace, but when a giant like Google takes your product head on, you have to pay attention, and it’s no doubt a little harder to brush off than if a no-name startup tried the same thing.

Should Facebook be worried about Google+ or vice versa? Let us know your opinion in the comments.

That start-up faces a much larger hill to climb in generating a brand and an audience. Google has a built in audience, and it’s enormous. It has a brand that has been turned into a verb. And that was years ago (though it’s still used very frequently).

So while Facebook may not be in any immediate danger, and Google+ may or may not ever become half the size of Facebook, it’s smart of Facebook to look at what is working with Google+ that some people might like better when comparing to Facebook’s user experience. That’s what Facebook is doing. They did (and continue to do) the same thing with Twitter, and Facebook still reigns supreme in social media.

The latest change is subtle, but noteworthy. They have locked the top navigation bar at the top of the screen, so as you scroll down the page, it is always visible. That means you can always see your notifications and the search box.

Google is also testing locking its navigation. It’s already live on image search, and probably just a matter of time before it’s across Google properties. If you use Google+, this navigation bar contains a link to your Google+ profile and a status update box. That means you’re never too far away from Google+ while you’re using Google.

In Facebook’s case, the sticky navigation bar could increase engagement with the notification counter always visible. Interestingly, it also keeps the search box visible. This could also increase engagement, but if Facebook does more with search, as it has often been speculated that they will (especially now that they’re in such heavy competition with Google), search is always right there. This could potentially make Facebook a greater threat to Google in the search realm. Facebook already taps Bing for its web search results, and Bing is already growing its market share little by little.

Americans alone already (collectively) spend a century on Facebook in a month’s time.

Interestingly, the sticky Facebook navigation bar doesn’t keep the publishers box for posting status updates at the top at all times.

Other things Facebook has done lately that are kind of Google+-esque:
- Circles-like sharing. Last month, Facebook announced new sharing features that make it easier to share things with the people you actually want to share them with. This has been one of the things that people have found most appealing about Google+‘s Circles.
- New friend list options. Just this week, Facebook announced some new options for friends lists, which is really kind of an extension of that last feature. Also like Circles, it’s a way to separate your friends.
- Subscriptions. Also this week, Facebook also announced subscriptions for profiles that share information publicly. Basically, it’s just a way to follow people without them having to follow you back. Twitter has done this for years, but it seem to have taken Google+‘s arrival to get Facebook to offer similar functionality.
There have also been other random signs that Facebook is a little worried about Google+. For example, remember when Facebook blocked that Google+ user’s ad? Facebook has also been stingy about Google+ users getting their FB contacts into Google+.

The point is, in the few short months since Google+ launched, Facebook has rushed to do things that make the two services more alike. To be fair, Google+ (without question) borrowed plenty from Facebook to begin with, but the differences between the two seem to be getting less and less.

That is one major reason why Google+ itself faces a tremendous uphill battle. Facebook is giving users less reasons to like Google+ better. And Facebook already has all of the users. Meanwhile, Google+ gets to keep trying to convince people that it’s the place to be as opposed to Facebook.

Google did finally launch the first Google+ API, which should help in making Google+ more useful as third-party apps are able to build around it.

On the other hand, Google Buzz has APIs too.

It’s not as if Facebook and Google+ can’t co-exist, but Google has put a lot of time and resources in to making Google+ the best Facebook competitor it can be. Will it all be worth it?

Who should be more concerned about its rival’s recent moves: Facebook or Google? Tell us what you think.
September 18, 2011
Facebook Smart Lists Kind of Google+-esque

Facebook is apparently testing a feature called “Smart Lists” which appears to group your friends by people you work with, people you attend school with, and people who live within 50 miles of your current city.

The feature appears to have been first spotted by Nick Starr, who tweeted the following screen shot:

Update: Mashable has some additional screenshots of some broader friend-flitering testing.

The extent of the testing is unclear, and this may or may not become a mainstream feature, but it kind of seems like another way Facebook is encouraging users to use Facebook in a way that has made Google+ appealing to its users – the separation of friends.

Of course, it’s not like Facebook didn’t let you separate people before. Google’s version was hardly a new idea. Facebook has had lists and groups both for some time, but this appears to be more a pre-made set of likely lists that users would want to use, without the user having to make the effort of setting them up.

The real appeal of Google’s Circles as it launched was the ease of the Circle-specific sharing functionality. It’s easy to know who you’re sharing a post with at any time. Apparently recognizing this as a good idea, it didn’t take Facebook too long to implement similar controls.

It’s not as if Google+‘s entire interface wasn’t influenced by Facebook though, so it seems pretty fair. Maybe by the time it’s all said and done, Facebook and Google+ will be exactly the same.

Facebook has also been reaching into the Twitter idea pool again lately as well. Check out the recent iOS app changes.

September 9, 2011
Facebook Pageviews: That’s A Lot of Faces

Here’s a quick explanation concerning the concept of just how big one trillion is, here’s a quote from children’s author, David Schwartz. “A billion seconds is 32 years. And a trillion seconds is 32,000 years.”

Now, while I’m not sure how that would convert in relation to pageviews,but we’ll just go with this: For those of you who think a billion pageviews is impressive; and it is, it’s nothing compared to one trillion pageviews, which, if we go by Schwartz’ standard, is ten thousand times larger than the petty one billion’s worth.

And that, folks, is the amount of pageviews Facebook has received since coming online, the most of any site listed in Google’s “The 1000 most-visited sites on the web” list. At the top, with that gaudily impressive trillion count–here’s what it looks like in numeric form: 1,000,000,000,000–is Mark “I’m NOT Jesse Eisenberg” Zuckerberg’s social networking creation.

For those of you who are uncomfortable with such a claim, especially when you consider Facebook’s acknowledge membership count has not surpassed one billion members yet, a post from Digital Inspiration has you in mind:

Officially, Facebook has 750+ million users but the number of unique visitors who flock Facebook every month is much higher because certain sections of the site – Facebook Pages and Profiles for example – are open to non-users as well.

A perfect example of this is AT&T’s Facebook page. Granted, it’s not a personal page, but even without being signed in, you can at least view AT&T “Like this page” invitation. Upon “liking” AT&T, users then “get access to everything AT&T.”

How that’s accomplished through a mere social network site, I’m not sure, but the offer’s out there. Of course, you could also point out that you have to be a Facebook member to “like” AT&T’s page, but the fact is, you can still see at least one part of their content if you are not.

Interaction or not, this, too, counts as a pageview in Facebook’s incredibly large pageviews coffer. Here’s a look at the rest of Google’s top ten sites in regards to pageviews, and there should really be no surprises:

Click for larger image
YouTube’s there, as is Yahoo and MSN. One noticeable absence however, is Google.com itself. A disclaimer on their “Learn more” page states:

Keep in mind that the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don’t have publicly visible content or don’t load properly, and certain Google sites.

Based on the listed results, it’s safe to say the actual Google.com site was one of the omissions. With that in mind, do you think Google.com has more or less pageviews than Facebook’s mighty trillion mark?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

August 24, 2011
Facebook Takes the Google Route. Will it Work?

Facebook is the king of the hill when it comes to social networks, but it faces growing competition from a couple of old foes. Google is rampantly trying to play catch up in the social networking space, while Twitter seems to have a new-found motivation for improvement. There is news out about Facebook’s strategy (which interestingly enough is reminiscent of Google’s overall strategy for the last decade: acquisitions, acquisitions, acquisitions.

What should Facebook acquire to maintain its edge? Tell us what you think.

Acquisitions

A new report out from Bloomberg says that Facebook is planning to make about 20 acquisitions this year, which would be twice as many as last year. This isn’t a rumor. It’s straight from Facebook’s director of corporate development Vaughan Smith.

The company has already made 13 acquisitions this year, according to Bloomberg. These include: Mac app maker Sofa, mobile app creator Snaptu, group chat company Beluga, mobile ad company Rel8tion, and iPad app maker Push Pop Press. Such acquisitions are line with Facebook’s plans to focus on design and mobile, as Smith indicated in the report.

Beyond Acquisitions

There is a lot more to maintaining a solid user experience and keeping people engaged than just piling on the acquisitions. It’s what is done with the acquisitions, and what features are added (or kept or removed) that keep people around. It’s also partnerships and the developer ecosystem that make things interesting, fun or worthwhile.

This week, Miramax announced a new Facebook app that could very well pave the way for the future of movie-based entertainment on the social network. Other movie studios have experimented with Facebook movie rental, but Miramax, working directly with Facebook itself has come up with a whole new concept for this, including plans for purchasing and digital storage.

Facebook is also expected to get more music-oriented with the help of a handful of partners. The recent U.S. launch of the popular Spotify may play a critical role in that.

While Facebook faces plenty of obstacles on the competition front, it’s also facing others on the legal front. And I’m not talking about the Winklevii or Paul Ceglia. The “like” button has essentially been outlawed in Germany. But that’s a whole other story.

The Google Threat

A couple months back, Google unveiled what might turn out to be Facebook’s biggest rival to its core business of social networking. Though there have been reports of slowing growth, initial growth of the service has been huge compared to rivals Facebook and Twitter for the amount of time it’s been out, and it’s still in invitation-only mode. But yeah, yeah, yeah…we’ve talked about all of this plenty of times before.

What we haven’t talked about quite as much is Google’s launch of games for Google+. Games keep a large amount of Facebook’s users engaged, and there’s no reason not to assume they will have a similar effect on Google+ users as well – especially considering that Google+ has the popular Angry Birds, and a handful of games from Zynga – the maker of some of the most popular titles on Facebook.

You also have to keep in mind that Google’s only going to keep integrating facets of Google+ with other Facets of the overall Google experience, which has a whole lot more users than Google+ itself. For example, Google+ posts are coming to Gmail:

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Google also started adding Google+ posts to Google search results. On top of that, Google profiles (the backbone of any user’s Google+ account) are only going to continue to be more visible in the search results. Think about how many people use Google search. Google is pushing its authorship markup to webmasters and content producers (a future ranking signal, by the way). When this is used, authors of content show up with little images in the search results that stand out. When these are clicked, they go to that author’s Google profile. Expect to see more and more of these as more people adopt this markup.

Google also started including a Google+ hangouts feature right on YouTube video pages. Think about how many people watch videos on YouTube. Ok, don’t even think about it. Just look at these numbers from comScore:

Now think about how often people share YouTube videos. This feature lets people not only share the videos but watch them together.

These are just a handful of some of the more recent things Google has been doing with Google+. Nevermind that they’re pushing to make Google TV more appealing to consumers and are in the running for an acquisition of Hulu (think about the possibilities).

Oh, and Google’s not too shy about acquisitions either. You may recall recent news of the proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Facebook is putting more focus on mobile?

The Twitter Threat

Long before Google+ was even conceived of, there was another Facebook rival in town that went by the name of Twitter. While it has built its popularity up over the years, it was not until the return of co-founder Jack Dorsey earlier this year that the company really started kicking things up a notch.

One of the most significant things that has happened since then is Twitter’s addition of its own photo sharing feature. Then another major development occurred just this week, as the company announced user image galleries, which give people a place to simply go and look at all of a user’s pictures.

If you think about Facebook or Google+, this seems like a basic feature of a successful social network. Photos are a big part of the experience. Yet, Twitter has managed to be as successful as it is without this kind of functionality.

Now that users will have this kind of functionality, they will get a new dimension to their Twitter experience, and many will likely engage more with the service. As discussed in a recent article, it seems like the young are trending toward more Twitter use (and for some of them, perhaps a little less Facebook). I would not be surprised to see this new functionality continue to fuel that.

Twitter has also given webmasters and businesses more reason to maintain a good Twitter presence. Twitter referrals are now easier to track in analytics. All links over 20 characters are wrapped in Twitter’s t.co URL shotener, whether they are posted on Twitter.com or any Twitter client. As a result, analytics programs will recognize URLs as coming from t.co as opposed to TweetDeck, or some other client (hat tip to TheNextWeb on that one).

Another major, major thing Twitter has going for it is that it will be heavily integrated into iOS 5, the operating system that will power Apple’s iPhones and iPads when its launched this fall. From Apple:

iOS 5 makes it even easier to tweet from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Sign in once in Settings, and suddenly you can tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, or Maps. Want to mention or @reply to a friend? Contacts applies your friends’ Twitter usernames and profile pictures. So you can start typing a name and iOS 5 does the rest. You can even add a location to any tweet, no matter which app you’re tweeting from.

Right now, Facebook is still king.

While it’s true that Facebook does face growing competition for social networking eyeballs, it’s not in any immediate danger of losing a substantial amount of its user base. Millions of people are still using Facebook every single day and often throughout the day. Considering that, webmasters and businesses should consider some other recent developments.

How about this infographic from KISSmetrics, which looks at the timing of Facebook posts:

If you have Facebook apps, it’s worth noting that Facebook last week put out its guidelines for social design, which are worth a perusal.

Facebook has been filtering the news feed (even when sorted by most recent, without the user actually hiding people), and they’re expected to launch an unfiltered version. The ticker concept has already been spotted numerous times in testing. This shows posts roll in in realtime on the right side of the screen separate from the news feed itself. The point is, you may soon find that the visibility of your updates will go up dramatically.

In the news feed itself, Facebook has already been grouping posts by topics. If two or more of your friends mention a certain brand in a post, that brand will get some special treatment in the news feed. More on that here.

It’s also worth noting just how much traffic the search engines are sending to Facebook Pages. Search Engine Land looks at a study from PageLever indicating that 27% of referral traffic to Facebook Pages comes from Google. I wonder how much more we’ll see those Google profiles stand out in Google results, especially once the brand pages roll out. Will that take away from brands’ Facebook page traffic (which means Facebook’s traffic)?

Is Facebook in danger of losing its social network dominance? Tell us what you think.

August 23, 2011