This may be easier said than done, and among their biggest competitors in this effort is obviously Google.

While Facebook is essentially a social network it has been trying to incorporate search into social. On the other hand, Google which is basically a search engine has been working hard to get a foothold in social through their social network Google +.

Facebook certainly has a much larger user base than Google +. This could work in its favour as they will be able to attract more people to see their ads. However, certain features of Google +, are more attractive than those on Facebook.

While users of Facebook are mostly connected only to their friends due to the privacy settings of that network, it is easier to get in touch with a wide variety of people on Google +.

This kind of networking obviously leads to more stimulating and informative discussions, rather than the discussions on Facebook where people usually talk to each other about their day to day schedule or days events.

Also users can access many more sites such as Places, Maps and Navigation, YouTube and others through Google +.

Based on these observations one will have to wait and watch which social network will ultimately attract more advertisers and thus generate more revenue.

Not too long ago, Google introduced search plus your world, in an attempt to make their organic search results more social, on the back of Google+. Bing’s new design uses a three-column format to give their users a more social search experience.

Bing redesigned for social search

On the extreme left is the improved web results column, which provides regular organic search results. The second column is a ‘Snapshots’ column. As the name suggests, this column offers the most relevant information related to the user’s search. It also provides integration with services like OpenTable to allow users to actually take the required actions. The third column is a social sidebar, which includes recommendations by friends and experts related to the user’s search.

Bing director Stefan Weitz spoke to Fast Company recently and said that the change was in response to their need to “reinvent search.”

Bing hopes to be able to use the data available on the net to create apps that will provide instant answers to users so that they won’t have to click through to a Web page to the find the information they require.

The idea of incorporating the social column on the results page is that users would generally rely on the opinion of their friends far more than they would rely on the opinion of unknown people or on abstract search results.

Ultimately the target that Microsoft has in mind for the new redesign is obviously to increase their search market share by making a dent in Google’s monopoly. As of now, Microsoft has accumulated losses of about $6 billion since the launch of Bing about three years ago.

The Facebook Factor

Incidentally, it is the owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who can be credited with helping to create the new Bing design, as he told the developers working on this project “Don’t try to do social by building social on the side. Build it into the experience.”

Bing’s close ties with Facebook will work strongly in their favour in this case. Unlike Google+, which is still a fledgling, relatively unimportant social network in spite of its claimed high volume of users, Facebook is a truly social network and using the social aspects of Facebook to power Bing gives the new social search engine a lot more credibility than Google plus your world.

Users in the United States were invited to try the new Bing interface yesterday. Let us know what you think of it – will this new feature make you leave Google and start using Bing?

www.bing.com/new

The new scheme is being tried out currently in New Zealand.

New Zealand-based news magazine, Stuff, first reported this new service when it was discovered by one of the users in Whangarei.

The user first thought that this was just another Facebook-based con doing the rounds. However, a spokesperson of Facebook later confirmed that this was a genuine service that was in the trial stages.

“We’re constantly testing new features across the site. This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends.” the spokesperson for Facebook further said that a number of new ways of highlighting certain posts were being tried out and this was one of them.

The highest charge for highlighting a post has been pegged at £1.25 ($2) while others cost 25p or 50p. Payments can be made through credit card or PayPal.

The spokesperson also clarified that ways to highlight certain posts for free were also being tested. He however did not clarify how long the tests would go on, and whether they were likely to be tried out in other regions.

Facebook is due to float an IPO shortly and has been trying various ways to increase their revenue generating capacity.

Additionally, the social network has also seen a slow-down in growth in recent months, and this could be one of the ways they hope to be able to make up for the slow-down.

Facebook claims that this new facility could be beneficial to users when they want to publicise a particular post.

Many argue that small businesses or certain charitable organisations might use the service but they find it difficult to see how it would be helpful to the average user of the social network.

Competing with eBay

What these critics don’t realise is that individual users do sell and buy goods in an open market – after all, that is what built eBay into the e-commerce powerhouse it is today.

Facebook could use the same idea as eBay, except here individual users could buy and sell goods from a trusted network rather than absolute strangers, potentially making it a very strong source of competition for the online auction site in the future.

Only time will tell how popular this new feature will become and whether Facebook has the ability to turn their social network into a trusted commerce network, which will in turn dictate how much money Facebook will actually be able to generate through it.

The stated reason behind the launch of this app center is to help users to find “the best apps” that their friends enjoy using.

Facebook will sell social applications through the App Center. It is obviously a very smart move as it will allow their over 900 million users to buy the apps through Facebook.

The Facebook App Center. Image courtesy of Facebook

Developers are also being encouraged to create new paid-for apps solely for Facebook. Those who develop apps solely for Facebook will have to share 30% of the price with Facebook.

Facebook engineer Aaron Brady says, “For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates, Viddy, and Bubble Witch Saga,”

An app detail page will describe to users how a particular app is unique and let them install it before going to it. Facebook will employ parameters such as user ratings and engagement, to decide whether or not a particular app will be listed in the App Center. A new app ratings metric in Insights, will be installed to help developers to monitor their users’ feedback.

Apps will have a star rating based on Facebook’s social graph similar to Apple’s App Store. Apps that have a high rating will be prominently displayed on the App Center, while apps with poor ratings will not be listed.

The App Center will be rolled out to users over the next few weeks. The launch of the App Center by Facebook just before their IPO seems like a smart move, allowing them to show investors that even though mobile is a risky area for them, they are proactively working on ways to earn money from the medium.

Robert Scoble, a popular tech blogger and Facebook user, recently found that a comment he wanted to post on the social networking site seemed to be censored. Scoble tried to comment on a post by someone he didn’t know personally. Instead of seeing the comment below the original post, he received a message informing him that his comment could not be posted as it was “irrelevant or inappropriate”. This seemed surprising as the comment was related to the original post and Scoble claims it was in no way unfit for publication.

Facebook comment censorship or bruised egos?

Facebook’s error message was misinterpreted by Scoble to imply that the social network had taken upon itself the task of analysing and censoring comments. In spite of this being quite contrary to Facebook’s stated policies, Scoble couldn’t perceive that his comments could ever be perceived as spam, so he automatically assumed that Facebook was censoring his text.

It is known that users have the right to inform Facebook about inappropriate messages and comments by flagging them. Facebook then takes the necessary action to block such posts. If it is found that a particular user’s messages are repeatedly inappropriate, that user can be blocked from the site altogether. However, this particular post did not fall into that category.

On enquiry it was found that it was not so much the blocking of the comment, but the wording of the message that created confusion. Facebook has clarified that the comment was blocked due to some features in their algorithm, which is used to block spammers. They are in the process of trying to find out what exactly in the controversial comment caused the spam blocker to get triggered.

The official statement from Facebook on this issue is, “To protect the millions of people who connect and share on Facebook every day, we have automated systems that work in the background to maintain a trusted environment and protect our users from bad actors who often use links to spread spam and malware. These systems are so effective that most people who use Facebook will never encounter spam. They’re not perfect, though, and in rare instances they make mistakes. This comment was mistakenly blocked as spammy, and we have already started to make adjustments to our classifier. We look forward to learning from rare cases such as these to make sure we don’t repeat the same mistake in the future.”

Discussions about this possibility originated after a report on CNBC mentioned the possibility of Microsoft swapping Bing in exchange for shares of Facebook, following the announcement of the Facebook IPO.

Rick Sherlund, who is an analyst with Nomura is in favour of such a deal as he feels it would be a win-win situation for both parties concerned. He further explains that while Facebook is looking to improve their search capabilities, Microsoft is losing money on Bing. The amount of loss is estimated to be $2.5 billion a year.

Facebook, which is already using Bing to power their search results, could improve their search feature further if they had full control over Bing.

On the other hand, Microsoft could continue to make money through search and display ads in the form of TAC [traffic acquisition costs]. Also if Facebook is able to improve their search results, they would give more competition to Google , which itself is good news for Microsoft.

Facebook’s huge user base makes it more capable of improving their search facilities and is thus better equipped to compete with Google, especially where it comes to social search.

As far as the valuation of Bing goes, it is estimated that Microsoft would probably be able to get between 1% to 2% of the Facebook IPO valuation, which is estimated to be between $75 billion to $100 billion.

It has just been announced that Facebook has bought mobile photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion.

In the initial stages Instagram was only compatible with Apple’s iPhones. However, they have recently launched an app that is also compatible with Android phones.

While the iOS version already had about 30 million users, the launch of the Android compatible app has given them a further jump in numbers. On the first day itself they received 1 million downloads, and 5 million in the first 6 days.

Facebook has only recently started distributing ads through mobiles and the acquisition of Instagram should help them to improve the user experience. In effect it will also help them to better monetize their mobile site.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced on his Facebook page that the Instagram brand will be retained as it is. “Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.”

While some analysts feel that this move to buy Instagram is with a view to corner its user base, Gartner analyst Ray Valdes says that it is more likely to be a move to keep it away from the hands of their rivals.

Both Zuckerberg as well as Instagram chief executive Kevin Systrom, have said that users will be able to continue sharing photos on sites other than Facebook, and Facebook users will be able to ‘not share’ their Instagrams if they so desire.

According to the latest reports on this issue, it is believed that Facebook is trying to improve their search functionality in the hope that this will lure away more users from Google towards Facebook.

This report has of course come through unnamed sources, and one of these sources is a former employee of Google according to ‘Business Week’. 

The said employee of Google is Lars Rasmussen and he is believed to be leading a team of 24 people who are set to revamp the way in which Facebook search operates.

While Google is way ahead of all others including Facebook as far as their search market share is concerned, Facebook hopes to be able to make use of the various apps at their disposal to chip away at Google’s market share slowly but steadily.

Google on their part are trying to integrate their social feature Google+ with their search engine.

The main problem that Facebook is currently facing in this endeavour, is the fact that the privacy settings of users allow them to integrate only those results that a user has set for public viewing.

On the other hand the problem Google has to deal with is the fact that their social site, Google Plus is certainly not as popular as Facebook is.

Only time will tell which of the two sites will eventually reign supreme in this game of one upmanship.

The ad service, called New Payer Promotions, was first launched in February to help developers generate revenue through the users who play their games.

Players making a first time purchase on Facebook with their credit card or PayPal account will be shown such an offer. The offers will be sponsored by Facebook. Early results indicate that about 20% of those who purchase such offers return for more within a month. That is a good sign, as it predicts that the feature is very likely to be popular among users.

Developers will now be able to place offers in their games by making use of a new unit called DealSpot. This unit will be seen only by those users who are eligible for it. In other words, only those who have never purchased such an offer before will see it. Those who have made such a purchase in the past will not be shown the offer again.

An eligible user will see an in-game icon that promotes the offer. When the customer clicks on the icon, the offer overlay is seen. By paying $1, the gamer will be offered Facebook credits worth $1 and an additional $4 worth of the developer’s in-app currency.

New payer promotion on Facebook

Developers who already have DealSpot running in their games can make use of the New Payer Promotion directly. Developers who do not already have DealSpot running should load it. Facebook recommends that developers offer in-app currency in order to make the most of this feature. If a developer does not have an in-app currency, the user will be able to redeem the $4 in Facebook Credits.

However, more and more people are now becoming aware of the fact that these services can pose considerable danger if the information conveyed by them ends up in the hands of the wrong people.

A case in point is the feature of geotagging, which is commonly used when uploading photographs on Facebook and checking in on Foursquare.

When a simple photograph taken on a smartphone is posted on a social networking site, it gives out a lot of information, including the location of the person.

Add to this the fact that some people have huge “friend” circles on sites like Facebook. Often the user may not even have met many of these “friends” and may be unknowingly letting out information about himself or his family to the wrong people, who could misuse it.

A real life example of how this happens was illustrated in 2007 when four US Army helicopters were destroyed in Iraq after geotagged photos were posted on the Internet.

Facebook will soon introduce the Timeline feature worldwide. This feature will also make it possible for enemy forces to figure out the location and route to be taken by allied armed forces, thus endangering their mission.

Most of these applications allow users to decide who should or should not see their photos and other information. It is of extreme importance that a user decides wisely, who should be allowed into their inner circles and have access to information about them and their families.

Staff Sgt. Dale Sweetnam, of the Online and Social Media Division of the US Army says, “A good rule of thumb when using location-based social networking applications is do not become friends with someone if you haven’t met them in person.”

This warning could apply equally well to civilians as well. As technology continues to advance and make life easier, it also adds some unforeseen dangers to one’s life.

Facebook Premium

Experts had predicted this would happen when Facebook kick-started the process of filing their IPO. Mobile was identified as a point of risk and this new service is a step towards mitigating that risk and  generating as much revenue as possible.

The new service is called Premium.

Premium ads will be seen in the news feed of a user if for instance, a friend has ‘Liked’ the ad. In other words, only social ads in the form of sponsored stories will initially be placed in the main news feed.

Facebook Premium illustration. Image courtesy of Facebook.

Advertisers will be able to start using Premium in April. The announcement was made during a marketing conference held in the auditorium of Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday.

This is the first time that the mobile version of Facebook and its apps will be used as a source for revenue generation. However, Facebook will have to be careful with the way in which they offer this service as they will have to safeguard the user’s privacy while at the same time allowing advertisers to reach their target audience.

Reach Generator

Until now, marketers were allowed to use Facebook Pages as a free marketing tool. Premium ads will only appear in the news feed and the Facebook algorithm will determine whether or not an ad will appear in a particular user’s news feed.

Reach Generator takes news feed ads a step further. The service allows advertisers to pay Facebook on an ongoing basis, as opposed to a CPC or CPM basis, to sponsor one page post every day, and guarantees a 75% reach of the page’s fanbase over a month-long period.

The service is always on and advertisers don’t need to do anything other than generate interesting content once a day within less than 90 characters for their fans. Facebook guarantees that brands will reach a large percentage of their audience and estimates that the volume of engagement with the brand will double.

Unlike Premium Facebook advertising, the Reach Generator service will only be available to a limited group of qualifying advertisers. At present, qualification requirements have not been released, but are likely to consider advertiser budget and fan volumes.

Pages with Timeline

All Facebook Pages will be moved to the Timeline format, just like personal profiles, by 30 March 2012. The new format will allow pages to show richer content, create a history for the brand and engage directly with Fans via Likes, comments, shares and now even via direct messages.

One of the biggest criticisms of the timeline format for brand pages, however, is that it eliminates custom landing pages for brands, which were a very commonly used tool by most marketers. From April, users will always be taken to the main Facebook Page Wall and page  owners will not have the option to redirect users to any other tab.

Moreover, the cover image on the new profiles is not allowed to call out user actions such as Liking the page nor include any sales or contact information.

AccuraCast’s Facebook Page updated to timeline format

Level Playing Field?

In some ways, the new changes level the playing field for all advertisers and page owners. Brands will no longer be able to create doorway pages pushing users to Like the page. However, brands with deeper pockets will be able to pay their way for higher engagement.

Sponsored stories and social ads have shown better results on Facebook since they were launched. Now, these ads will become the norm, making the user experience better. However, ads will now show up in the main news feed, which is Facebook’s prime property. This alone is very likely to cause a severe backlash as users will most definitely protest the invasion of their personal feed by ads. Here too, brands with more resources will be able to post a lot more to the news feed and those who relied on the free promotion of news feed stories are likely to be quickly left out.

A document in this regard has been leaked to Gawker by oDesk, a company to which some of this business is outsourced by Facebook. The document shows that there are fairly strict guidelines about what is permissible and what is not, although these guidelines can also be quite confusing.

Facebook abuse standard violations document leaked to Gawker Media

It has been found that gory images such as those showing deep wounds or crushed limbs are allowed. Of course, these images of crushed limbs or such should not include a view of any internal organs. On the other hand, pictures showing nipples, including of breast feeding mothers are not allowed.

Any form of sexual activity is also banned even if the sexual parts are covered. In contrast, foreplay even between same sex individuals is allowed, though Facebook has historically displayed a degree of bias against gay and lesbian themed images.

There is some confusion with regards to material regarding drugs. It is alright to show a picture of a person using marijuana but it is not acceptable to show a drunk or unconscious person.

Guns are not mentioned in this document. While Facebook doesn’t allow advertisers to promote firearms or weapons, neither the content policy document nor the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities provide any indication about whether Facebook condones or disallows promotion of guns and weapons organically by users.

While Facebook monitors some of the sensitive material itself, some of their content moderation work is outsourced. This is understandable, considering the amount of material that is uploaded on Facebook by their 840 million+ users.

On the other hand, how they maintain the privacy of their users when they outsource this material is debatable. Even though Facebook says that they do not part with user information, a disgruntled employee of the outsourcing company, Amine Derkaoui, says he was able to link content to users’ identities.

This only means that users should be careful not to upload material that they would rather not have others see, even for private viewing.

With this new feature Facebook will verify the identity of their high profile account holders. Those who wish to have their accounts verified will have to contact Facebook with some form of official identification in order to prove their identity.

Facebook will provide some display name options to the users, once their identity has been verified by them. The users will also have the option of prominently displaying an optional name such as a nickname or a maiden name, if they so desire.

This will make it easier for other users to find and follow the accounts of celebrities such as film stars, journalists, politicians and the like. It will be less likely that they would follow some impostor or another person with the same name.

Facebook competitors Twitter and Google+ already have similar features running, wherein they authenticate the accounts of celebrities that other users may wish to follow. However, the system came under fire a while ago, when Twitter verified a fake account as being that of Wendi Deng, the wife of Rupert Murdoch. Facebook has a far larger user base than Twitter and it will be that much more difficult for them to ensure that they do not make similar errors.

Another advantage of this new feature will be the fact that some celebrities who are better known by their pseudonyms will be able to use their stage name without violating Facebook’s original policy of letting users use only their birth names. For instance, not many people are expected to know who Stefani Germanotta is, but her pseudonym Lady Gaga would be recognised instantly.

About half of the 850 million users of Facebook access the network through their mobile phones.

This has naturally made them want to start monetising this medium – by introducing Facebook Mobile ads. It is believed that they may introduce this feature next month itself, so that it would be functional before they go public, which is expected to happen in May.

It is actually quite surprising that Facebook has not already started to monetise mobile. It is very likely that future investors would question the reasoning behind this failure to make use of the opportunity to monetise what is one of the most popular apps.

Advertiser Challenges

Generating good mobile ads is a rather tricky task, compared to advertising on desktop computers, as the screen space available is much less. Also, users are likely to be interested only in relevant ads when they are on the go. Ads would need to be short and catchy. The use of graphics would also be tricky as image sizes are likely to be smaller in mobile ads.

Business Benefits

Businesses are likely to jump at the opportunity to grow their mobile user base and make use of sponsored stories to get more brand recognition and potential business via trusted referrals. Similarly, localised ads on mobile could see tremendous uptake by local businesses such as restaurants, hotels and stores.

The Biggest Risk – Users

The biggest challenge for Facebook, though, will be to lure more users to their mobile site and apps via better location features and to keep these users happy without getting them upset about too much advertising in such an intimate medium – especially in the wake of the IPO announcement that has made so many acutely aware of Facebook’s billions.

Turns out that according to Shareaholic, Facebook is the number one source of referral traffic with 25.6% of the market share in December and 26.4% of the market share in January. Other sites such as StumbleUpon, Google and Twitter also contribute to the numbers.

Newcomer Pinterest is generating a good amount of referral traffic. According to a report from Shareaholic, this site is generating more traffic than sites like Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube put together.

In December, Pinterest had 2.5% of the market share while in January they contributed 3.6% of the referrals. This growth is especially impressive when you consider that in July last year they sent only a miniscular 0.17% of referrals.

StumbleUpon, which holds the second position for referral traffic had 6.5% of the market share in December, but has fallen to 5.07% in January.

Facebook and StumbleUpon’s relatively large share of traffic referrals has been corroborated by reports from StatCounter in the past.

Although Google Plus contributes a very small amount of the total share of referrals – just 0.22% – other Google sites such as Google news, Google Images and Gmail continue to be major sources of traffic.

The company, which was private so far, was rather secretive about their financial dealings. Most of these details will now have to be made public, as they will be answerable to their shareholders.

Facebook has filed for an IPO worth $5 billion. This means that they hope to be able to raise that amount of money from the sale of their shares. However, they have not yet clarified how many shares they will be selling and what the price of each share will be.

Analysts are speculating that the total valuation of the company is around $75 to $100 billion.

It is also too early to know exactly how Facebook will utilise the money generated from the IPO. Speculations are rife that among other things they may choose to buy over Zynga the manufacturer of the popular social game FarmVille. Rumours about Facebook manufacturing their own mobile phone are also doing the rounds.

Additionally, it is certain that the IPO will help the local economy of Silicon Valley where their headquarters are situated. The cash generated from the IPO will also help Facebook to steal a chunk of Google’s display ad revenue as advertisers reallocate budgets to the place where most users are.

None of these possibilities matter too much to Facebook’s end users though. Their experience and loyalty to the network should theoretically remain the same.

Going Public Changes Companies

Whatever Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO may say, once the company goes public, they will be answerable to their shareholders and they will have to change the way some things are done.

For one, there is bound to be a push to monetise the network further and further. While a lot of this growth could come from international expansion and uptake of their advertising services, analysts will expect to see growth in the US and Europe as well.

In-Stream and Mobile Ads

Growth and monetisation will mean the need to sell more advertising. While the right-hand column on Facebook already contain a lot of ads, the news feed has remained relatively free of advertising. This is likely to change with the introduction of sponsored stories in the ticker in the near future, and surely will result in the placement of ads within or at the top of the main news feed eventually.

Mobile is another area that is currently free of advertising, but is also very likely to start seeing the infusion of ads.

What other changes do you expect to see once Facebook goes public?

According to a report in the BBC, Facebook will file papers for the IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday.

The company will be valued between $75 billion to $100 billion. They hope to be able to raise about $10 billion through the public offering.

If they manage to achieve this target it could be one of the largest share offerings to take place on Wall Street, making Facebook one of the largest companies in the world, by market capitalization. Google had raised $1.9 billion through their public offering in 2004.

It is being suggested that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will be involved with this public issue.

Most of Facebook’s monetization occurs through advertising and is believed to be around $5 billion. Since Facebook is a private company so far, they have not been required to publish their accounts.

Ironically, the upcoming IPO has made the executives at Facebook extremely conscious about their own privacy. Web Pro News has reported that before a recent news conference, attending journalists were initially asked to sign a non-disclosure contract. It is a different matter that the contract was eventually called off when they objected about such a contract infringing their right to free speech and code of journalism.

Facebook has not yet made an official announcement, but the indications are all there that this announcement will happen, and the possibility of such an announcement has got the press and investors very excited.

Possibly the worst kept secret in the industry at present, this IPO filing could be what the U.S. economy and stock markets need. However, a lot of analysts and investors are also worried that such an ambitious floatation could flop just like the recent IPOs from Groupon and Zynga.

Nearly 1 in every 5 minutes (20%) of the time spent online was for social networking in the month of October 2011. Further, this activity is indulged by 82% of the world’s online population.

Social networking has grown in popularity over the past few years, and has provided a new way for people to build more contacts, as well as making it easier for people to remain in touch with their existing friends and family who may be spread out across the globe.

The Rise of the Global Social Networking Audience
Source: comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide, March 2007 – October 2011

One of the major factors fueling the continued growth of social networks is the increased use of the Web through mobile phones, which help people to communicate even when they are on the go or in regions where they cannot access a wired connection.

Only five years ago, in March 2007, social networking was used by less than 500 million people, while email was the primary online activity, with 528.7 million users. By October 2011, the graph has changed drastically and social networking now accounts for 1,179.4 million users while email has only 916.8 million users. The social network graph continues to grow parallel to the growth of Internet usage.

Worldwide Regional Popularity

Asia-Pacific regional users constitute one-third of the world’s social networking population. However, Latin America accounts for the largest amount of time spent on social networks.

Percentage of Online Population Using Social Networking around the World
Source: comScore Media Metrix, October 2011

Another interesting finding of the report is that women are more social across the globe.

Facebook is of course the most popular social network, and has 55% penetration. Three-fourths of the time spent on social networks is on Facebook, and one in seven minutes spent online are on Facebook. Google+ is a fast growing social network, and it is the only network to have signed up 25 million new users in less than one month.

Inevitably, micro-blogging has also gained in popularity. Twitter is, of course, the most popular micro-blogging site – in October 2011, it was used by about 10% of Internet users worldwide.

Interestingly, these social networks are growing in popularity across all age groups. In fact, males and those above 55 years of age are the fastest growing group.

Revenue Lagging Growth

Social networks deliver the most online display ad impressions, but they do not generate the largest revenue. 25% of ads are displayed on social networks but they generate only 15% of the revenue.

U.K. Social Statististics

Snapshot of social networking in the United Kingdom
Source: comScore Media Metrix

Facebook’s Messenger app, which is still in the trial stage, allows users to access the social network without opening a browser or while browsing other sites on the Web at the same time.

Users can chat with their Facebook friends, receive status updates and friend request notifications and view the news ticker.

The app only supports Windows 7 at present. Once the app has been set up, a user can log in by right-clicking the Facebook icon in the Windows system tray and selecting Log in.

Once logged in, the user pretty much remains permanently logged into Facebook unless they expressly choose to log out, which isn’t as easy to do. There’s no log out option in the main app window. In order to log out, you right click the Facebook icon and select Log out. Using this option will completely log the user out of Messenger as well as Facebook.

While this strategy of keeping users logged in by keeping the log out mechanism out of regular sight might seem cheeky, it doesn’t end there. The app allows users to ‘Exit’ and close the Messenger app but still remain logged in to Facebook. This keeps users logged in even if they log off the machine for when they log back into the PC.

Much like Windows Messenger, users of this service can also use the ‘x’ button at the top right hand corner, to close the side bar but still continue getting notifications and view chats.

While the app allows users to chat or message individuals, it is so far not possible to chat with a group of friends. As far as user privacy is concerned, the same settings that are applicable to Facebook will be applicable on the app.

According to this report, the list is similar to the one they had released last year. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of unique visitors to most of the top sites.

It is no surprise that search, social networking and video remain at the top of the reasons for mobile browsing with Google, Facebook and YouTube scoring the top three rankings respectively.

The world’s 10 most popular mobile websites are:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. youtube.com
4. vkontakte.ru
5. odnoklassniki.ru
6. yandex.ru
7. wikipedia.org
8. my.opera.com
9. yahoo.com
10. twitter.com

The report has compared the findings between November 2011 and November 2010. Apart from seeing rapid growth in Asia, Opera Mini has also found a substantial increase in mobile Web usage in Latin America, Africa and South East Asia.

The site, called so.cl (To be pronounced as “social”), is meant to help students to share interesting discoveries related to their curriculum with each other.

so.cl

At present, the site is restricted to a handful of universities such as the University of Washington, Syracuse University, New York University and a few other schools. Others who may be interested in this project can express an interest in the project by signing on using their Facebook id or emailing microsoft.

The site looks like a combination of features from Facebook and Google+. It will have a combination of search, web browsing and social networking features.

Bing powers the search function of so.cl. Users can create ‘rich posts’ by finding interesting images and links on the web, and using So.cl’s montage function to assemble them automatically into a cool visual. They can also share videos with friends or any users via ‘video parties’. Although the name sounds like a video party is a variation of a Google+ Hangout, it is actually just a simple way to search, and quickly assemble a list of movies to view together with friends.

Example of a video party in So.cl

So.cl was developed by Microsoft FUSE Labs. The project has been described as “an experimental research project focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning.”

The logic behind the launch of this site for students is the belief that many students would be interested in the same kind of information. Such a social network would make it easier for students even from distant places to share their information with each other.

Microsoft has clarified that this site is not meant to replace any existing social network such as Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. In fact users have to sign in through their Facebook account in order to access this new social network.

According to the official post on the Facebook Developer blog, they arrived at this decision because it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain these pages. These app profile pages are automatically generated and similar in appearance to the Facebook pages, but they do differ in features such as Insights, APIs and distribution channels.

Angry Birds Facebook app profile page is empty but still exists to support the app

While all apps have a Facebook profile, most of them do not use this page. This has increasingly become the case as more and more businesses choose to have custom Facebook tabs and welcome pages, which require an app to be created but whose profile page should ideally remain hidden to avoid confusing users.

A banner indicating that these pages are soon to be deleted will now be displayed to admins at the top of their App Profile Pages.

If an admin has an eligible Facebook Page – that is, a Page matching the app name and of the Product/App category – the Likes can be transferred to that page. Once the Likes have been transferred the page administrators will be able continue to publish updates to users from the Facebook page. However, the content of the App Profile Pages will not be transferred. The contents such as photos, posts, insights, will have to be manually downloaded and then uploaded again. All this will have to be done before using the “migrate” button. Once the ‘migrate’ button has been clicked, all data on that page will be deleted.

The migration process can take upto seven days, and it may be several hours thereafter before any activity is seen on the page. If no action is taken before the first of February, the app profile page will be deleted and all its traffic will then be directed to the app.

Facebook will also remove all related graph API object connections on the 1st of March 2012.

New apps will no longer automatically get an app profile page. They will have to create a Facebook page and will be presented the option to do so easily during the app creation process.

The very first thing users will notice about the Facebook app is that it looks and functions a lot more like the website. Notifications are immediately visible and layers are used to provide instant views of friend requests, messages and notifications.

Facebook’s old Android app was notoriously slow, had multiple screens each of which took long to load even for simple functions and did not have a very intuitive interface. Even something as fundamental as viewing pictures and commenting on them was hidden and required users to know exactly where to touch to show the comment option.

It is now much quicker and easier for users to share photos, and messages as well as to navigate. According to a post on the Facebook blog, with this new app, photos and albums will be twice as fast as before. It will also be easier for users to edit their captions and view comments, both of which were tricky features to use in the old app.

Messages and notifications will now be placed at the top of the page, so users will be able to access them and respond tot hem without leaving the page.

Similarly, a new menu button on the top left corner of the app drops down a menu that enables users to access their news feeds, groups, games and apps with a single click, instead of having to leave the news stream and then go to the main menu.

These new features are for Android 1.8 and require Android 1.5 or later versions. The app continues to be available for free on the Android Market and still does not feature any Facebook ads.

Mobile Ads En Route?

Given that over 350 million active users (43% of Facebook’s total user base) currently access Facebook through their mobile devices, the platform is extremely important for the social network. It is no wonder then, that they would strive to make the user experience as good as it is on desktops.

It will also be no surprise when they do start monetising the medium and launch a mobile advertising service.

It is quite well known that any and all information once posted on Facebook is stored by the website for ever. The information could be concerning a user’s location, sexuality, political beliefs, religious beliefs or any thing else. Even if a user deletes content, it still remains in Facebook’s database indefinitely.

This information is then passed on to marketers and advertisers who wish to advertise to a highly targeted audience. The user is not even aware that this information has been stored and later passed on to others. In fact, Facebook’s advertising policy specifically forbid advertisers from making their ads seem too personalised lest this alert regular users to the degree of personal information the system actually shares with advertisers.

According to a report in the Telepgraph, the European Commission is planning to introduce a new directive that would actually ban targeted advertising on Facebook. This would be much harsher than the current FTC directive that’s just been imposed on the network.

A spokesman for the UK Information Commissioner says, “Facebook should ensure that any data it collects should be used in the manner that its users expect. If personal data is being passed on to a third party or used for targeted advertising then this should be made clear to the user when they sign up to the site and reinforced when users are invited to use an application.”

Facebook has, however, argued that they do not pass on specific information about users but only generalised information. This argument does not seem to have found favour with the FTC or the users, as it is very easy for the marketers to locate the person or persons concerned with the information that is made available to them.

The FTC has now ruled that Facebook can no longer pass on any of this information on to advertisers, unless the users specifically give their consent to do so. In other words, Facebook will have to change their policy from the current opt-out policy to an opt-in facility.

If Facebook fail to do so, they will have to face legal action or pay a huge fine.

It remains to be seen how Facebook will deal with the situation, as it could mean a big loss to them financially. This may even delay their plans of going on to the Wall Street Stock Exchange next year.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook has made mistakes with regards to user privacy, in the past, but he also pointed out that they have been learning from these mistakes and correcting them.

One of the most important messages that the FTC has passed on is regarding standardization of the practice of opt-in. So far most social networks have been following the reverse practice of opt-out.

According to the opt-out practice, companies can approach all clients who have not opted-out of a particular feature. Now they will be allowed to approach only those users who have specifically opted-in for that feature.

Media analysts have remarked that this rule is not likely to adversely affect marketers as most users opt-in for all features any way.

The network will also have to be more transparent in letting users know, who can see their information.

Mark Zuckerberg says that in spite of the fact that they have made mistakes in this regard, they are very particular about this issue. He says, “Facebook has always been committed to being transparent about the information you have stored with us – and we have led the internet in building tools to give people the ability to see and control what they share.”

He has clarified that Facebook has already set right, over the last couple of years, some of the complaints that the FTC has asked them to deal with.

Facebook has also appointed two new corporate officers to make sure that user privacy is protected more thoroughly.

In effect, it looks as though Facebook wants to appear to follow the FTC suggestions not only in letter but also in spirit. It is also likely that these suggestions of the FTC will have to be followed by all other social networks as well.

Last week, Facebook spokesperson, Annie Ta said, “Starting on Monday, we are continuing to slowly roll out Sponsored Stories in [the] ticker across Facebook. Sponsored Stories help people see more relevant marketing on Facebook and they can be twice as engaging as ads on Facebook.”

Facebook launched the Sponsored Stories feature in January this year and the ticker was launched in August. The ticker is placed on the top right of the Facebook homepage.

Sponsored Stories are similar to the Promoted Tweets on Twitter. They show an ad relevant to a status update posted by a user. The Sponsored Story will then be relayed to the contacts of that user, making the target audience feel that they are seeing an ad that has been endorsed by one of their friends and is connected to the status update.

Even though the ticker has received a lukewarm response at best, Facebook says that Sponsored Stories are twice as engaging as normal advertisements. Statistics from Nielsen also indicate that such ads are more likely to be remembered. Our own advertising has also found that click-through rates and connection rates on Sponsored Stories are consistently higher than on regular Facebook ads.

According to documentation on Facebook, the Ticker only displays information to others who are already able to see elsewhere on Facebook. Page Like, App Share and App Used Sponsored Stories are eligible to appear in ticker for others to see, but only if they could have already seen them in News Feed.

It will be a while before advertisers can decide whether end users like the idea of Sponsored Stories running in the ticker, or whether they will consider it to be more of a nuisance.

Horowitz emphasized the use of Circles to easily segment audiences when communicating brand / product / corporate messages and the Hangout feature, which allows brands to host face-to-face video sessions with customers. Both of these are features that would appeal to large businesses.

The real power of Google+Pages, though, lies in their ability to influence search engine rankings for a brand or product name. This alone is reason enough for all business owners to want to ensure that they do have a presence on the otherwise placid network. This is also Google’s only ace in an otherwise extremely weak deck.

A number of bloggers have labelled the new feature a rush job or a Facebook / Twitter rip-off. What they overlook is the fact that unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google+ can integrate with a number of even more useful services, not least of which is Google Search and YouTube, to change the way brands can reach their target audience.

In February of this year, Facebook acquired Beluga, a group messaging service.  They have now fully integrated it with Facebook Messages. The app is very similar to Beluga as well as to Facebook Messages.

The app has been available to users through Apple’s App Store as well as through the Android Market. However, it didn’t get as much traction as Facebook would have probably liked, which is why they’ve now started displaying alert messages at the top of the News Feed in the Facebook Android app, prompting users to download the Messaging app.

When users opens the Facebook Messenger app they see a list of recent Facebook messages. When they create a new message, they can send it to their contacts or Facebook friends. If a message is sent to a user when the app is not open the recipient will receive a notification via their handset. Messages can be sent to all Facebook contacts via Facebook Messages, while other contacts from the phone book can be reached via SMS if their mobile number is verified on Facebook.

Facebook Messenger allows users to directly and quickly contact their friends on the phone, irrespective of their location. The messages are delivered instantly and it is also possible to make plans and carry out group conversations at once.

Google+ Messenger provides very similar functionality, which might be why Facebook is now pushing its own messenger app to Android users more aggressively.

While Facebook Messenger has crept into the #1 spot in the App marketplace this week and is showing a distinct bump in download volumes – since the time it was launched – it is still far behind the likes of WhatsApp Messenger, which has clocked over 10 million downloads.

Designated administrators of company profiles on LinkedIn will now be able to post updates of no more than 500 characters. This will have to be done through the ‘Overview’ tab on the company’s profile page.

Posting status updates on LinkedIn

Updates will appear in the news feeds of users who follow that particular company. The followers will then be able to not only comment on the update, but they will also be able to ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ the update with their friends directly from the company page. This feature is exactly the same as that on Facebook Pages.

Facebook Pages allow companies to also share videos and images and ask their fans questions. The LinkedIn feature is limited to plain text updates and links, which is quite in keeping with the more formal, business orientation of the network.

Companies will be able to share breaking news, employee moves and available job opportunities with their followers in a more professional manner on LinkedIn. Followers of the company will be kept up to date with all the information about the companies they are interested in.

For quite some time now there has been a demand from several companies to allow this kind of instant interaction between the company and its followers. Ryan Roslansky, director of product management at LinkedIn says, “Nearly half of our members follow over 2 million Company Pages on LinkedIn. This is a great way to build engagement with customers, potential employees and prospects alike.”

The popular social network is now in the process of releasing a new advertising format, which will help them to attract more clients, and in effect earn more money.

Building on the fact that Facebook is a social network, ads in the new format will expand when a user’s friend has ‘Liked’ it. When this ad appears in front of a user whose friend has liked it, the ad will expand to allow the user to comment on it and also see other related comments on the ad.

Unlike regular sponsored stories, the expandable ads allow users to comment and interact with an ad unit just as they would any other post that a friend ‘Likes’ or shares. This makes the ad seem much less like an ad, and much more like any other piece of content – image or video – that gets shared on Facebook.

The theory behind this new ad format is the fact that just like movies, restaurants and books, an ad is more likely to be appreciated by a person whose friend has already approved of it.

At present, expandable ads are not available to all advertisers. This ad unit is due to be announced at Advertising Week in New York.

This new feature makes sharing what one does on the web, a lot easier than it was – so much so, that in some cases sharing could become automatic. In the past, a user had to ‘Like’ something in order to share it with others.

Now users just have to click ‘Add to Timeline’ once on any app or website. Thereafter, every article the user reads is automatically published, unless the user remembers to actively turn off the auto-share feature.

While this simplifies the process of sharing things, it is also possible that a user might leaves this feature on and forget about it. If that were to happen, all activity on that website could gets shared with others.

Automatic sharing of a one’s online activity could easily lead to embarrassing situations where friends and family suddenly start seeing updates about views of certain not-safe-for-work articles or photos that one would not normally want to be publicised.

Auto-sharing music listened to on Spotify

This new auto-sharing feature is called Gestures. The concept is not entirely new on the web. The Huffington Post and Washington Post Social Reader have similar features. Once a user joins these sites, every article read is automatically published, unless the user remembers to actively turn off the auto-share feature.

However, considering the fact that Facebook is far more popular than the Huffington Post or the Washington Post Social reader, the possibility for doing damage to someone’s reputation is considerably higher.

This is not actually a violation of user privacy as the controls lie in the hands of the user at all times. Users must be careful to remember to switch off the auto-share feature, once they have finished sharing whatever it is they wanted to share with their friends.

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, this is a way of ‘telling the story of your life’ as it relies heavily on sharing everything you’ve done. The new Timeline is similar to a regular Facebook wall, but it dates back to the earliest details added online by you.

All industry analysts knew that Facebook would announce something big  during the f8 conference held today in San Francisco. They also knew that many of these changes would be reacting to the growing popularity of Google Plus. What exactly these announcements have now been revealed.

In the last few days, Facebook already introduced some changes, such as the new subscribe button, revamped Friend Lists, a new News Feed format and a real-time news ticker. As usual, the new design has been met with resistance from a number of users.

However, these changes are minor in contrast to what has now been announced.

Most significant of all, is the change to the News Feed, which is now split into “Top Stories”, “Recent Stories” and a “Ticker”. Profiles are also evolving and turning into Timelines, or what Zuckerberg calls “the story of your life”.

An introduction to Timeline

Facebook Timeline with cover, stories and apps sections

When a user shares a post normally, it goes into their news feed. When that user adds activity on third party websites or apps through the Facebook Open Graph, it will go into Ticker, and into Timeline, but not into the news feed normally. The Open Graph and Ticker make a stream of everything users are experiencing and expressing through Facebook.

This is the first time the social network has enabled sharing “lightweight” activities, such as listening to a song, watching a movie, reading a book, or even cooking a meal.

Facebook news ticker expands stories when moused-over

Developers will be elated at the attention once again being given to apps, especially via the Ticker as well as in a dedicated section of the Timeline.

Google+ recently announced updates to improve their popularity. The new Facebook design and features are very clearly aimed at incorporating the better parts of Google+ and improving on them by adding a whole lot of embedded capabilities.

New features include larger images, embedded video, music streaming – this expectation arose after an employee of Facebook tweeted about it. He said, “The ‘Listen with your friend’ feature in ticker is blowing my mind. Listen to what your friends are listening. LIVE”. The post has since been deleted.

The U.K. has about 30 million users of Facebook. So it is expected that 15 million users from U.K. find it essential to log in everyday.

This announcement was made by Facebook’s head of insight management Robert D’Onofrio, during a London Facebook conference co-hosted with Omnicom Media Group.

Other details about the U.K. Facebook user base reveal that the male-female ratio is approximately 50-50.

It was also made known that the users between 18 – 24 years of age are the most proactive. Among other age groups, the 35 – 44 year age group is also very active with a 50% daily log in rate. They also have the maximum number of check-ins.

Users over the age of 45 years have been found to be responsible for generating over 400 million stories each month. Robert D’Onofrio says that “They’re just as engaged content wise as a 19-year-old college student,”

Statistics collected from regular polls of the user base reveal that over a quarter of the users share photos of recent purchases such as shoes. Over two-thirds of the users take friends recommendations into account while making regular purchases such as groceries and 40% of respondents say that they would like to see promotions from their favourite department stores.

Facebook subscribe buttons

This button will allow people to decide from whom they wish to receive news feed updates. In other words, Facebook users can now not only get news feeds and status updates from friends, but they can also receive the ‘Public’ updates of people who they do not know personally but are interested in.

Conversely, the user can also decide whether they want to receive all updates from all their friends or only selected updates.
Effectively, the Subscribe button allows people to:

• Choose what they see from people in their News Feed.
• Hear from people, even if they are not friends
• Let people hear from them, even if the subscribers are not friends

By using the subscribe button, a user can decide whether to receive all updates from a particular friend, most updates, or just important ones. Users can also decide to see only photos from a particular contact or blank-out another one altogether.

Like Google+ Circles and Twitter Follow buttons, the Facebook Subscribe button allows users to get updates from individuals they do not know, such as a politician, actor or singer, provided these people have decided to allow Subscriptions to their personal Facebook streams rather than their Facebook business / brand pages and they make at least some of their updates public.

Ordinary users may also be followed by others who do not know them personally, if they have selected to allow subscribers.

For once, Facebook has taken the sensible route and required users to specifically opt in to allow subscribers rather than enabling it by default. Subscribers are blocked by default and to opt in a user must go to the Subscriptions Page via the menu on the left-hand side of their profile and then click the “Allow Subscribers” button. It is an entirely optional feature and the power rests with the user.

The study, incidentally, was conducted to show the importance of clean drinking water. While drinking water was ranked third, above Facebook, the results were not quite what one would expect.

Facebook was ranked fifth in the list. Clean and flushing toilets were ranked ninth!

Similarly, an Internet connection was ranked at number two, just after sunshine, which of course most Britishers are known to be quite starved of.

Ironically, another survey conducted earlier this year found that nearly 50% of men accessed the Internet on their mobile while in the toilet.

Technological advances and social networks have been given predominance over other requirements such as washing machines, showers, fresh fruit and vegetables, pain killers and even shoes. However, to give them more importance than food, clothing and the basic sanitary facility of flushing toilets, seems rather extreme.

The study polled 3,000 British residents, many of whom could possibly have been young adults, who tend to dramatise the importance of trivial things and have never had to live without the ‘comforts’ of clean toilets being available to them.

The top 10 items in the list were as follows.

1. Sunshine
2. Internet connection
3. Clean drinking water
4. Fridge
5. Facebook
6. NHS
7. Cooker
8. Email
9. Flushing toilet
10. Mobile phone / smartphone

In fact, 4 out of the 10 most important things the respondents said they couldn’t live without are completely unrelated to the sustenance of life. Even more ridiculous is the fact that 15 out of the 50 “essentials” were items such as eBay, iPods and Twitter, which didn’t even exist 20 years ago!

Are the British public really such a nation of airheads or was this just another survey with a poorly chosen sample showing “stats” that are far from reality?

These changes to how users set privacy levels for their content have been made keeping in mind the requests that Facebook has received from users over a period of time. It is no small coincidence that these changes come as Google’s own social network, Plus, is quickly growing in popularity and uses a much simpler privacy setting mechanism than Facebook.

It will now be easier for users to share photos, posts, tags and other content only with those whom they wish to share the information.

Most of the changes have been made by moving the controls from a separate settings page to a position directly inline, next to the photos or tags.

Setting privacy levels on Facebook next to a content tag

To begin with, users will be better able to control the information available on their profile. They will also be able to control who can see this profile.

The controls for these settings will now be available in a drop-down menu next to an icon, instead of being on a separate settings page. The user can control the settings with a single click.

Users will now be able to approve photos of themselves, when they have been tagged by someone, instead of being automatically visible to all as soon as they have been tagged. The user can now approve or reject a tag that someone has made for him.

It will be easy for users to see how their profile looks before others see it. The user will now be able to control who sees his posts. He can also add location and tag other people he is with, if he chooses to.

A drop-down menu with the terms, Public, Friends and Custom will be available to decide who should see the photos. This menu will be expanded in future.

Earlier the term, ‘Everyone’ meant that all on the internet could see the photo. This word has now been changed to ‘Public’ to better express what they mean.

Users will also be able to decide who can and cannot see their posts after the information has been posted, unlike in the past, when they had to make this decision before posting the matter. Earlier, users could add location only through the ‘Places’ feature on a smartphone. They will now be able to do so from any device.

Users will also be able to remove a tag that someone else has added, if they do not like it.

These changes will help to streamline and simplify the way users communicate through Facebook. Many of these features are already available on Google Plus which is doing very well.

The changes are expected to start rolling out from Thursday 25th August.

The prime minister has justified his stance by saying that the riots had been “organised via social media” He further says , “When people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them.”

While it is indeed certain that misuse of the social media should not be allowed, the idea to ban the social media seems rather simplistic.

It can be argued that when social media did not exist, riots still occurred. In the olden days, people got together in small groups to discuss their strategy and then disseminated the plans in person. Later when the print media came into being, the use of news letters and pamphlets to propagate ideologies and plans was widely used.

In light of this, a blanket ban on the use of social media would be equivalent to ‘shooting the messenger’.

Also such an act would also prevent those with good intentions. There are many people who are using the same platforms to propagate peace and to help those affected by the riots.

It has now been decided that representatives of Facebook, Twitter and RIM are to meet with the home secretary Theresa May to discuss the steps they can take to prevent the anti-social elements from spreading further arson, as well as to discuss how these websites can be of use to detect those who are responsible for the mayhem caused.

These sites have gladly agreed to meet with the authorities and extend full cooperation to deal with the current crisis.

On the other hand, groups that advocate that people have the freedom to use all media to interact with each other have opposed the idea of banning the social media, and have even compared the move to what governments in places like China and Saudi Arabia may do.

It is possible to filter down this calculation to individual devices by using various Facebook Apps. Facebook has a page for every authorised app that is connected to their system. Through these dedicated Facebook pages, blogger Benedict Evans calculated how many people use each Facebook app on each mobile platform, such as the iPhone or Blackberry.

Evans estimated that smartphones from Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG jointly account for about 24 million users, while the official Android Facebook app accounts for about 53 million users. Android, in all, has approximately 76 million Facebook users, in spite of having sold only about 120-130 million handsets.

About 50% to 60% of users of the iPhone and iPod Touch use Facebook. Since Apple has so far sold about 190 million of these gadgets, the number of Facebook users is estimated at around 85 million.

Ovi from Nokia has only about 5.6 million users, while the recently launched Facebook feature phone already has about 7.5 million active Facebook users.

These statistics proportionally reflect the number of smartphones in the market using the main operating systems and from each major manufacturer.

However, there are some devices that do not have an official Facebook app. For instance, the iPad does not have an official Facebook app as yet. Similarly, a number of OEMs using Android have their own Facebook apps.

The number of people using the exclusive mobile website is far less than those using Facebook apps. The number of users accessing the social network via third-party apps is about half the number of people using Facebook.

In total, the number of people using all of the apps comes to about 222 million. If Facebook’s estimate of 250 million mobile users holds true, it can be estimated that about 28 million people are using the mobile web for Facebook exclusively.

While Google had a market share of 90.53% in May 2011, in the U.K. it now has a market share of 92.02% for the month of June 2011. Similarly, a year-on-year comparison shows that Google had a market share of 91.82% in June last year.

In contrast, competitors Yahoo! and Microsoft jointly account for only 5.84% of the market share in search. This is a decrease of 1.49% compared to the share in May 2011 and a decrease of 0.21% compared to June 2010.

However, in spite of this growth, the overall share of search has reduced. In the past, search accounted for 40% of all traffic on the net. It now accounts for 34.29% of all traffic.

This result does not however mean that online search is on the decline. It only indicates that in spite of the fact that the overall number of searches are increasing, the percentage of traffic coming from search has declined because traffic from other sites, notably the social networks, is on the upswing.

A study of the traffic on social networks indicates that after a slight decline during the last three months, Facebook has now recovered and has the largest market share of all social networks at 53.72%. This is a growth of 0.11%.

YouTube, on the other hand, is the fastest growing social network in spite of being at the number two slot. It now accounts for 20.76% of all visits to social networks in the U.K.

In general, social networks are now the second largest source of traffic on the internet accounting for 12.54% of all traffic.

The first such report provides an analysis of the use of plugins for social networks.

The report shows that Facebook is easily the most popular as far as the number of links to various sites is concerned.

The report compared the data between the month of June 2011 and July2011.

It was found that Facebook is the leader of the pack with links to 47.4 percent of the top 10,000 websites. This includes a direct link to the Facebook homepage. In comparison Twitter has 41.8 percent, YouTube has 16.75 percent, and LinkedIn has 3.7 percent.

The change experienced by these sites in the two consecutive months has been almost negligible. YouTube is the only site which experienced a slight drop in usage from 16.77% to 16.75%.
As far as adoption of social plugins is concerned, the rate is much lower than expected.

Facebook is the number one here too, with four plugin services. They are Facebook Like button (10.8 percent), Facebook Like box (6.1 percent), Facebook Connect (1.9 percent), and Facebook Recommendations (1.2 percent).

The Google +1 button has been doing well for itself, and is currently placed at number two. At 4.5% it is ahead of Twitter which has two services. The Twitter Tweet button (2.1 percent) and the Twitter Follow button (1.3 percent).

Jim Yu CEO of BrightEdge says “Fewer than half the largest sites on the Web offer any kind of social link at all on their front page and these sites represent a massive slice of Internet traffic on any given day. We would expect to see a land grab effort this year as plugins vie for placement on this very valuable Web real estate.”

It has now been confirmed, that that service was the launch of Video chat, in conjunction with Skype.

This launch will now make video calling available to all of Facebook’s 750 million users, and will give a wider user base to Skype.

The cooperation between Facebook and Microsoft can also be expected to increase as Skype has recently been bought over by Microsoft.

While people may speculate that Facebook has launched this service as a counter attack to the launch of Google Plus, it is quite obvious that Facebook must have been planning and discussing this deal with Skype for quite some time. The timing may just be coincidental.

As of now, the video chat function is only available on the desktop. Mobile users may have to wait a while for this service. There has been no information about this service being made available on the mobile in the near future.

It also remains to be seen how popular video chat becomes in the near future. It is quite possible that a large number of users may consider video chat as an intrusion of privacy, unlike communication in the form of text messaging.

Power Editor, the first new feature, is a browser-based tool for creating, editing and managing ads in bulk. Earlier this work was done by Bulk Uploader tool. Advertisers can use their Ad Manager to start using this new feature.

Another feature added by Facebook is the introduction of Account Groups. With this feature brands and agencies will find it very easy to manage their ad strategies on Facebook. The agencies will be able to simultaneously access several accounts by grouping them together. This will give them better account organisation and the access to different accounts will be seamless.

To start an account group an advertiser must set a group of accounts under one name and grant or revoke permission for the entire group. He must then accept invites to join a group and select the groups in the Ad manager account list.

Speculations have been running high since then in anticipation of what that ‘awesome’ new product could be.

Reuters initially suggested that this new product could be mobile or tablet related, as Zuckerberg had mentioned that the Seattle office has played a major role in the development of this product, and it is a known fact that their recently improved mobile site was developed in Seattle. If that is so, it could well be the launch of an iPad App.

It is also being speculated, that Facebook may now be ready to launch their new photo-sharing app for the iPhone.

Another possibility being considered is ‘Project Spartan’, which is an HTML-5 based competitor to Apple’s App store.

The official invites for the launch are now out, and contain two chat icons placed very conspicuously. This has now given rise tot eh idea, that the launch could have something to do with a new video chat service powered by Skype.

Facebook has been working on a desktop component of video chat, built on Skype. This service will integrate several features of Facebook and Skype.

If this is indeed the new product to be launched, it will help Facebook to tide over the recent launch of Google Plus, which has generated a lot of interest amongst users. It will also give Skype access to Facebook’s wide user base of over 750 million users.

The launch of such a service will also please Microsoft, which has recently bought over Skype.

The latest report released by Opera, on the state of the mobile Web, indicates that a very large amount of mobile Web traffic is now being generated in India. Among the most popular uses of the mobile Web is to access the popular social network, Facebook, and also to access online videos. Another popular use of the mobile Web in India is for online shopping and online classifieds.

Popularity of the social network Orkut has been declining. While it was once very popular in India as well as Brazil, it is now on a downward trend in India, although it continues to be popular in Brazil.

In contrast, Orkut’s main competitor, Facebook has gained immense popularity in India. Orkut’s loss could be due to a lack of innovation in recent times. Google, the parent company of Orkut, has just launched a new social network Google Plus, which may change the situation in due course of time.

The top 10 mobile sites in India, ranked according to unique users since May 2010 are:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. youtube.com
4. vuclip.com
5. orkut.com
6. mobile2day.com
7. wikipedia.org
8. zedge.net
9. getjar.com
10. filestube.com

Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera Software, says, “We see India standing tall as a country in rapid development, with Internet-based knowledge at the forefront of that growth. Furthermore, the mobile Web in India has evolved as an important place to do business, as the proportion of people going shopping on the mobile shows.”

According to the report, for one year between May 2010 and May 2011, India was placed at the number three slot as far as Opera Mini users are concerned. Incidentally, Opera handles about 60-65% of the mobile Web traffic in India. During this period, the number of page views per user has also gone up from 390 to 430.

Latin America continues to show steady growth as well. Between May 2010 and May 2011, the number of unique users in this region went up by 535%, the number of page views went up by 1,556% and the data transferred during this period went up by 1,041%.

For over a year, a number of stories were either leaked out or speculated upon, about Google launching a social network. Invariably, the leaks were followed by denials about it. But now, things are out in the open.

Google has finally bitten the bait, and their new social network Google Plus (or Google+) has just been launched.

Google+

While there is bound to be excitement to find out what exactly Google Plus is all about, it seems to be a combination of features that are already offered by a number of other networks.

“Real-life sharing, rethought for the web” is the tagline for the new network. Users will be required to create a profile containing a name and a photograph. They will then find five basic features. These are:

• Circles
• Sparks
• Hangouts
• Instant Uploads
• Huddle

Circles allows a user to divide contacts into different groups such as family, friends and work. This will allow them to decide what information they wish to share with a particular group of contacts, instead of having to share all information with all contacts. A similar feature is already available on Facebook in the form of Friend Lists.

Sparks is similar to Google reader, which allows users to get updated news feeds by subscribing to sources of news and information. It facilitates the spread of viral content similar to how Twitter and the Facebook News Feed do.

Hangouts allows users to hold video conversations with various contacts at the same time. This feature is also available on Tinychat. The overall premise of the feature, though, seems to be inclined more towards mimicking functionality found on Foursquare.

As the name suggests, Instant Uploads will upload the photos taken on a mobile phone automatically. This is also possible through iCloud, Microsoft Kin and other platforms. This feature, though, competes directly with Facebook and Flickr for photo-sharing.

Huddle will enable the user to have a group chat. This is also possible through Beluga, which Facebook acquired recently and is very similar to Google Wave, which got discontinued at the end of last year.

Only time will tell how popular Google+ will become and whether or not it will provide any real competition to Facebook, which is already extremely popular and quite unlikely to feel any real threat in the near future. The odds are against Google once again, but they have very successfully beaten the odds in the past and just might do so again.

Recent reports from Inside Facebook had projected that the Facebook graph is on a downward slide, following a substantial loss in the number of users in the United States, U.K. and several other countries, between the months of May and June 2011.

In partial contrast to this, the study by UKOM/Nielsen has found that irrespective of actual user numbers, visits to  Facebook have increased and the popular social network has overtaken Microsoft in the U.K. for the first time ever, in the month of May. Facebook is now the second most popular site in the U.K.

According to this report, Facebook had 26.8 million visitors from the U.K. in May 2011, compared to 26.2 million visitors to the various sites on the Microsoft network in the same month.

While visits to Facebook increased slightly from 26.5 million, visits to Microsoft fell from 30 million in April 2011. In some ways, one could argue that Facebook doesn’t seem to have grown more popular, but instead Microsoft has lost popularity.

The same report also shows that the number of visits to Twitter in the U.K. has also gone up significantly during the same time period. The number of users for Twitter went up significantly following the episode about the super injunction pertaining to footballer Ryan Giggs.

Analysts at Nielsen indicate that the growth of users on both Facebook and Twitter is largely due to the growth of the number of users over 50 years of age taking an interest in these social networks.

While the interest by the over-50 population could be a good thing for advertisers, if the youngsters who have so far been the main users of these social networks decide to stay away from them because of the invasion by the elders, it could eventually have disastrous consequences for both sites.

Reding, who was in the U.K. recently, has already warned banks that they would be required to notify customers regarding any breach in data security. This instruction will now be valid for all businesses operating in the EU.

The earlier data protection laws, which were written back as in 1995, did not cover the Internet sufficiently, as it was only a fledgling industry then.

However, the Internet has expanded at an unprecedented rate over the years. Popular sites like Facebook and Google and gaming networks like the PlayStation Network have generated huge databases and there have been several instances of these databases being breached of user privacy. The EU commissioner intends to put an end to such breaches.

“Only recently, we witnessed a massive security theft in online gaming services affecting millions of users around the world,” Reding said. “This incident highlights why companies need to reinforce the security of the information they hold. Frequent incidents of data security breaches risk undermining consumers’ trust in the online economy.”

So far, Facebook has not breached any EU laws regarding user privacy, as they are based in the U.S. The new laws will be applicable to all businesses and services operating within the European Union, irrespective of where the company is based.

Viviane Reding has said, “The law is for everyone who does business on the territory of Europe, whatever the origin of the business might be. So you cannot hide anymore by saying ‘I do not have my headquarters in Europe’.”

There will, no doubt be difficulties in implementing these new laws for companies based outside Europe. Any action that needs to be taken, will have to be done through the nearest responsible national data protection authority.

For some time now, there have been rumours that Facebook might tie-up with Spotify to launch a music streaming service on their social network.

This service will enable users to play songs simultaneously with their friends. This was recently revealed by tech blog GigaOm. At the recent eG8 forum, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also mentioned that he believes that music will be the next industry to be disrupted by social.

Apart from this impending partnership with Spotify, it is also expected that Facebook will make similar deals with other music streaming services. A number of speculators believe that the social network is likely to launch a music dashboard, which will enable users to see and stream music based on the recommendations from their friends. Thus, users will know in real-time what music their friends are listening to, just as they can on services such as Last.fm.

It is not yet known how exactly Facebook can be expected to benefit from this facility as the cost of streaming music legally is already quite high, resulting in losses for several music streaming services.

Music streaming and video viewing on Facebook is already a very popular activity and a number of other companies are already capitalising on this fact. Facebook has most probably identified it as a revenue opportunity and wants to earn some money for themselves.

If this service is initiated, it is likely to lead to more advertising on Facebook. The service would also give competition to Apple, who have their own music streaming service, Ping.

While Facebook has been reporting continued and steady growth, the blog post from Inside Facebook, a blog that has been monitoring the growth of Facebook since the early days of the social network, has reported the reverse. The post in question claims that though the total number of Facebook users has been growing, and was around 687 million users in the beginning of June, there has been a definite drop in the number of users in the U.S. and Canada.

Growth has been achieved by acquiring new users mainly from countries where audiences started using Facebook much later. The Philippines, India and Indonesia are among them.

In the U.S.A, the number of users reportedly dropped from 155.2 million in the beginning of May, to 149.4 million at the end of the month. Similarly, the number of users in Canada has supposedly fallen from about 18.1 million to 16.6 million during the same period.

Other European countries such as the United Kingdom, Norway and Russia have reported smaller drops of about 100,000 users in this period.

On a global level, Facebook acquired 13.9 million new users in April 2011 and 11.8 million new users in May 2011. Both these figures are lower than the average over the previous twelve months.

While factors such as seasonal changes, college graduation and others may result in temporarily lower growth rates, it does not usually occur in two consecutive months.

Unique visitor to Facebook in the United States. Source: DoubleClick Ad Planner

The potential decline of Facebook has already prompted a spate of posts being written about life and marketing after Facebook. While this might be an unnecessary exaggeration created by bored bloggers, it has not stopped some advertisers from worrying and Facebook themselves have felt compelled to issue a formal statement.

Facebook’s official response has been, “From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions… We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.”

Monitoring sites comScore and Nielsen have reported a growth in Facebook usage. comScore reported that the average amount of time spent on Facebook has also grown from 21 minutes in December 2009 to 25 minutes in December 2010.

Maybe it is too soon to definitely say whether or not Facebook continues to grow or is already on the downswing. One thing is for certain, the social network is here to stay and with 700 million users, it is not going anywhere soon!

The ruling indicates that the media can still talk about these sites without actually naming them.  In other words, they can use general terms such as ‘social networks’ but not the actual names of the network concerned.

This has been done with a view to prevent the unfair promotion of these sites as it results in indirect advertising of the more popular networks and leaves behind the lesser known sites that are struggling to gain a foothold. It also prevents French broadcasters from promoting American businesses rather than local sites.

A lot of presenters and media personalities are now in the habit of saying “look me up on Facebook/Twitter”. In future, they will only be able to say “look me up on the social networks”.

This ruling has quite expectedly caused a lot of resentment in certain sections of the media as an unnecessary interference on the part of the government. Critics have gone so far as to claim that such interference will stifle future innovation, though it’s not quite clear how.

On the other hand, there are those who feel that this ruling is quite fair as it will indirectly help the other lesser-known social networking sites to gain some sort of foothold in the market.

The ruling, which has been passed in accordance with a law from 1992, is also being seen to be in defiance of the EU ruling on free access to the Internet and in a manner of speaking, a restriction on the freedom of choice.

Christine Kelly, spokeswoman for the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), the government broadcasting authority, reportedly said: “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are other social networks that are struggling for recognition.