Social Networking
Facebook Is The Top Spot To Spend Time
Feb 17th
According to new figures released yesterday by Nielsen, Facebook is the web’s top place to spend time. The average U.S. Internet user spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia, and Amazon combined.
Not only is it the top spot, the numbers are jumping upward from just six months ago. In June 2009, Nielsen estimated that the average U.S. user spent 4 hours and 39 minutes on Facebook per month. That’s about 9.3 minutes per day in a 30 day month. In August, that number rose to 5 hours and 46 minutes, or 11.5 minutes per day. In January 2010 however, the amount of time the average person spent on Facebook jumped to over 7 hours. Each American Facebook user spent an average of 421 minutes on Facebook per month, which amounts to over 14 minutes per day. Even if you lump together the time spent on Google (1:23), Yahoo (2:09), YouTube (1:02), Microsoft/Bing (1:35) Wikipedia (0:15), and Amazon (0:22), it still doesn’t beat Facebook. Maybe it’s YOU making this happen.
Declining MySpace Loses CEO
Feb 11th
First, the audience it stole from Friendster left for Facebook. Now, Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook executive Rupert Murdoch hired less than a year ago to reverse the site’s declining fortunes, has also left, MySpace announced late Wednesday night.
The bell has been tolling for MySpace for years, with users leaving the site pretty much as they found it: as a place to hear what a band sounds like and see what they look like in a matter of seconds, rather than as a place where they establish an online identity and communicate with friends.
After signing on last April, Van Natta wisely acknowledged this change in how people were using MySpace — as a media site rather than as a social network — by doubling down on the ad-supported MySpace Music service. However, the company was not able to fix problems with the service including poor integration with existing band pages, which left many users confused or uninterested in the service.
According to an Ad Age source, Van Natta bailed on MySpace because he was frustrated by the company’s “slow pace of change” and “entrenched culture.” A dearth of fast, competent, loyal software engineers in the Los Angeles area reportedly slowed things down even further. MySpace is headquartered in Beverly Hills, in southern California. Facebook, which evolves its design and feature set so often that some users can’t keep up with the changes, is located in the more technology-oriented Palo Alto, California.
VIA: wired.com
TweetGoogle Launches New Social Application: Google Buzz
Feb 9th
Today Google announced its latest social application, designed to bring the fire hose of social media and status updates down to a useful trickle of the most “interesting” bits. Dubbed Google Buzz, the service is designed to offer easier ways to share links, photos, and other information, corral all those things shared by friends and other connections, and integrate well with other services in an open way.
It’s “a Google approach to sharing,” according to Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz.
While the rumor was that Buzz would be Google’s “Twitter-killer,” it would actually be missing the point to describe it that way. Buzz offers a way to share status updates, if you want to use it that way. It can also be used to share links, videos, photos, and more—in this regard, it’s more akin to Facebook posts or even quick-blogging services like Tumblr or Posterous. Buzz can also integrate with other social services to share any publicly accessible things you post to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, Blogger, and any service that offers an RSS feed.
Buzz also offers a way for anyone you’re connected to via your Google contacts to comment on the things you share, much like your friends can on Facebook. Further, it adopts the de facto standard of using “@replies” to send notices to specific users.
In addition, Buzz gives users control over how information is shared. Posts can be made public or private. You can create groups of contacts, such as “co-workers” and mark items as shared with only that group, multiple groups, or just a single contact.
Everything that is shared publicly is instantly indexed by Google search index, and Buzz streams and comments update in real time.
Google Buzz is being rolled out over the course of the next few days. Gmail users should see a notice when they log in once it has been activated on their account. We’ll be sure to share our thoughts once we have an opportunity to put it through its paces.
VIA: arstechnica.com
TweetHow to Make Money On Twitter
Dec 9th
For business, this is the most important tool you can be using right now. Twitter is the only medium currently where you can search a keyword or a product and find people talking about it in real-time. This is extremely important when you want to get some feedback on your product or service. You can see what people are saying about your company or your product. You can also choose to send those people a message. A lot of companies are moving to Twitter for their customer support as well. Customers are searching for answers. Why not be there for them?
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