Google Ambushes Social Web Market
Many people did not think that Facebook would remain in the spotlight for so long. Like Myspace, it was expected that a new social networking site would have come along by now to knock the big FB out of the limelight. Maybe Twitter was supposed to be the next big hitter but the blue whale of death is around too much for Twitter to be considered a threat. Well Google is attempting to be the next Facebook with their new ‘Google Me’ social media site.
Yesterday, June 29th, a former Facebook executive confirmed rumors about the existence of a Google social media site modeled after Facebook. On Quora, a site compiled of questions and answers on any topic imaginable, Adam D’Angelo said,
“[Google Me] is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.”
Google is a very ambitious “little engine that could.” They didn’t fear Microsoft when launching Google Chrome browser and operating system. They weren’t afriad of Apple and the iPhone 3Gs when developing Android. Along with the number one search engine, email service, etc. Google’s list of achievements could go on and on. A fairly recent project, Buzz, was meant to compete with Twitter by allowing any Gmail users to update his or her status and provided an option to follow friends. So it is not surprising that Google will be gunning for Facebook next. In the same post on Quora, D’Angelo also says,
“[Google] realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off Facebook. Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.”
High priority project probably means highly secretive. Right now is definitely a good time for Google to come out with a Facebook competitor because of all the criticism Facebook has faced recently. You can bet Google’s social website will take into consideration and avoid all the fundamental mistakes of Facebook.
Read MorePosted by Angela | 0 Comments
Quit Facebook Day Convinces 34K
Yesterday, May 31st, while you may have been cooking out, on the lake, or honoring lost soldiers on Memorial Day, over 34,000 people were deleting their Facebook accounts. The Quit Facebook Day campaign has been rallying followers for about two weeks. Even though they did not start long ago, they managed to convince 34,687 Facebook users to quit.
Personally, I cannot take their campaign seriously. First of all, their website uses inappropriate language-which is always a red flag to me- and blames their quitting on two (very avoidable) problems with Facebook.
Problem number one: “Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it [very] difficult for the average user to understand or manage this.”
So basically the privacy settings on Facebook are difficult to understand, right? Well didn’t Facebook just come out with simplified privacy setting options for this very reason? I think so, seeing as I just wrote an article about it last week. So now you have an option to turn off all application use of your information and an option to not allow any application access to your information through any of your friends. But Facebook reminds you, on most of the privacy settings pages, that your name, profile picture, networks, and gender will always be available to everyone. Therefore, if the Facebook privacy settings are too complicated for you to handle, don’t put anything on your Facebook that you don’t want to be seen. That’s a pretty simple form of privacy. Just like on any other website, don’t put something on the Internet that you don’t want the entire world to see. Seriously.
Problem number two: “We just can’t see Facebook’s current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we’re leaving.”
I’m not really sure what you even mean by this one. I’ll agree with you that Facebook has made some shady moves in the past, like what happened to Cheryl Smith last summer. But I also think Facebook has realized their bad moves and are trying to resolve those issues one at a time.
The Quit Facebook Day campaign may have convinced 34,000 users to delete their accounts with the social networking giants, but let’s be honest, 34,000 users isn’t even 1% of Facebook’s audience. With 400 million active users, it’s going to take you more than two weeks to wrangle enough people into your campaign for Facebook to even notice.
Read MoreTop 1000 Sites According to Google
Google’s top sites for April 2010 were published today. The Doubleclick Ad Planner list of 1000 most-visited sites was led by Facebook with Yahoo in a distant second. The list reveals that Facebook was visited by 540 million unique visitors in the month of April. With no other site even close, Facebook also had the most page views at 570 billion! It’s all those kids looking through albums and friends’ profiles.
Yahoo is behind them with 490 million unique visitors. Some other big contenders include MSN at number 5, Bing at number 13, Twitter at number 18, and MySpace way down the list at number 26. The top site without any advertising is Wikipedia in fourth overall with 310 million unique visitors.
Google’s list excludes Google and any Google websites, like YouTube- which is unfortunate, really. But clearly Facebook is still thriving more than any other site. Facebook reported a quarterly double in 28 countries in one recent quarter. All this while they are still receiving complaints about complex privacy settings. Just looking at the numbers, I wouldn’t suspect any unsatisfied customers.
Read MorePosted by Angela | 0 Comments
Facebook Faces Criticism Head On
The Washington Post had a surprise guest writer this morning in an article about Facebook. The CEO himself, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, wrote a short column addressing anyone who has ever complained about Facebook privacy in the past. That’s a lot of people to address at once, but Zuckerberg managed to do so with ease.
Facebook has been under fire quite a bit recently because of unsatisfactory privacy settings. If you remember Cheryl Smith’s story from last summer about Facebook’s misuse of her picture, then you know what I’m talking about. Facebook has been in the headlines day after day with the reoccurring theme of privacy (and today is no exception). In this case, Zuckerberg didn’t have to pull a Jesse James-size apology for Facebook’s flaws but he did acknowledge the mistakes Facebook made in its early years of development. He describes the privacy settings as “missing the mark” from the very beginning back in 2004. He tells how, originally, Facebook’s defining factor was its users’ control. Different from MySpace, Facebook allowed complete control over what information was shared and who that information was shared with. But now users want that same control (or even more) in a simpler fashion. Zuckerberg says, “The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.”
Overall, Zuckerberg points out that Facebook has had quite a few struggles- like when they came out with a new privacy policy that allowed some third-party advertisers access to Facebook users’ information without their consent- and says they are addressing these problems openly. New, simpler control settings (including a feature that will allow a user the option to completely hide his or her information from all third-party advertisers) will hopefully be out by late summer. I’ve got to hand it to Mr. Zuckerberg for keeping his cool and addressing the criticisms so diplomatically. And I can’t wait to be able to hide my profile and pictures from all third-party Facebook partners!
Update May 26, 2010: New privacy settings launched today. Read about them here.
Read MorePosted by Angela | 0 Comments
Goo.gl, Youtu.be, and Fb.me: URL shortening for ev...
If you’re on Twitter you know that you have to limit everything to 140 characters. Those 140 characters can be pretty difficult to achieve if you want to include a link to the funny article your Tweeting about. So Twitter supported a safe service to shorten URLs for its Tweeters, Bit.ly. Now Google, YouTube, and Facebook are jumping on the bandwagon and have all come out with their own URL shortening services.
Google just announced their new URL shortener on December 15th. The service, found at Goo.gl, is only available for Google products, like Google Toolbar and Feedburner. Google’s newly acquired YouTube.com is also creating its own URL shortening site for YouTube videos. With the beginning YouTu.be, these URLs are used only for YouTube videos and nothing else. Facebook is the most recent to join in on the URL shortening fun with Fb.me. This URL shortener is used mainly for pictures and commercial pages on Facebook.
Each of these sites is being very smart by not allowing their services to be used for anything outside their sites. TinyURL was the first big hit Website for shortening URLs but soon was banned by many Websites for distributing spyware. By creating their own URL shortening services, Google, YouTube and Facebook are avoiding that risk altogether. These shorter URLs also don’t disguise the URL, so you know when a URL is going to take you to a YouTube video or a Google Toolbar or a Facebook picture.
Read More