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.

The +1 button allows users to share stories and articles with their network of friends. In functionality, this is similar to the ‘Like’ button from Facebook and is a significant step towards the concept of social search by Google.

When a user clicks the +1 button the user’s network – as defined by the friends on their Google Account – will be notified about it.

Sites that are interested in making use of this new facility can set it up by visiting Google’s +1 button code generator page. The button can be set up in a choice of four sizes ranging from 15 pixels to 60 pixels. Users have the option to include a counter that can indicate the number of +1s a particular page has received. The feature is currently available in 44 languages.

Generate a +1 button for your site

Although it might be too early to judge, one cannot help wondering how successful this new service will be. As of now, not too many sites have jumped to add this function to their sites.

Some of the popular sites to have already included it are TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land – all search industry and tech veterans.

However, most of the really popular blogs and websites have not yet added this service. Sites such as Business Insider, Perez Hilton and TMZ have all chosen to wait and watch whether users will pick up on this new service or if it will flop like Google’s other ventures into the social space.

Sites such as YouTube, Blogger, Google Product Search and the Android Market are expected to add +1 shortly. These are Google-owned properties, though. Out of the top 10 most popular blogs, only 3 have added the +1 button conspicuously on their pages:

Success of the +1 button will be determined largely by the general public’s adoption of this feature. If Google’s history with social networking is anything to go by, few will be holding their breath for this one!

The new ad manager will provide advertisers with graphs and real-time monitoring of their ad campaigns.

A guide will update advertisers about the new features incorporated in the updated Ad Manager system. In general, the new platform will help advertisers find out how well their ad campaigns are performing based on the number of clicks and connections generated by each ad.

In the past, the focus of the ad platform was on the number of clicks delivered to each ad. Now, the system will focus on the reach and the number of connections made from each ad. Connections, in Facebook advertising terms, is measured as the number of people who ‘Like’ed a page, RSVPed to an event or installed an app within 24 hours of seeing an ad advertising the same.

Advertisers will now also get to see the ‘Frequency’, which will allow them to keep track of the average number of times a particular ad is viewed by users, or in other words how responsive users are to a particular ad.

Another metric that is now being reported is social reach. This measures the number of people who saw an ad along with the names of their friends who have already connected with the ad’s subject. This could be a very important factor as people will be more influenced by the positive opinion of their own friends.

New Facebook Ad Manager interface

The new interface will allow users to view all the ads of a given campaign inline itself instead of having to navigate to a new page every time. This will be a time-saving feature for advertisers and is a very welcome improvement.

In general, it seems that the new Ad Manager will help advertisers to better monitor the success of their ad campaigns, while at the same time saving precious time and helping them to connect better with their target audience.

This has been confirmed by the recently released Opera State of The Mobile Web report.

Accessing various social networking sites has become the most popular function on mobile phones. The network being commonly used varies depending on the location. While Facebook is definitely the most popular social site in the Western world, vKontakte is extremely popular in Russia and the surrounding region.

It has come to light that 77% of the users in Indonesia and the Philippines visit Facebook regularly on their mobiles. In this region alone, more than 400,000 Facebook users make use of Opera software to access social networks.

Those who use mobile devices to access social networks were also found to do so quite frequently, according to the page view statistics of the report.

Use of mobile handsets for social networking is expected to continue growing. It was found that between March 2011 and April 2011 the number of users of the Opera Mini Browser has grown by 4.6% to 107.1 million.

It has been discovered that Facebook hired a well known PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, to spread negative publicity about Google’s privacy policy and the search giants’ failed efforts at social networking.

Burson-Marsteller got in touch with a number of bloggers including one Christopher Soghoian and asked him to blog about Google’s policy with respect to user privacy. They even offered to help the blogger write out the article and they also promised to get it published in important places such as the Washington Post and the Huffington Post.

Unfortunately for them, Soghoian turned down the offer and instead posted the emails online for the world to see.

Email sent to Christopher Soghoian by Burson-Marsteller

When this story became public through USA Today, the PR firm was blamed for trying to run a smear campaign against Google on behalf of an unidentified client.

Dan Lyons from the US-based news site The Daily Beast then wrote that he has evidence that the client was Facebook. Confronted with the evidence a Facebook spokesperson later confirmed their role in the fracas.

Facebook tried to justify their actions by claiming that they felt that Google was acting in a way that was not good for user privacy and they felt that users should be made aware of this. Secondly, they claimed that Google was scraping Facebook data for their own social network, which wasn’t very ethical.

Whatever their reasons, the means employed by Facebook to run down their rivals can only be considered as underhand or cowardly.

This is Microsoft’s largest takeover deal yet, and it is hoped that this deal will place them in a better position to deal with the onslaught of laptops, mobile phones, tablets and other devices.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, made this announcement during a recent conference in San Francisco. The VoIP service will be paid for fully in cash, to become a part of Microsoft.

Services on Skype will be integrated with Microsoft’s existing platforms such as Xbox Live, Kinect, Outlook and Hotmail. Microsoft hopes to be able to put this technology to use for purposes such as video chats on Xbox, mobile conferencing through the Windows phone, audio chats between business associates and many more person 2 person services. This should enable Skype to reach a much larger audience worldwide.

Steve Ballmer has said, “By bringing together the best of Microsoft and the best of Skype, we will empower people around the world with new technologies that should bring them closer together.”

Earlier, Skype had been bought over by eBay, but the arrangement did not work out very well and Skype sold their major share shortly thereafter. It is a known fact that Skype had been on the lookout for someone to take over the company. It is believed that Google and Facebook were among the companies that showed an interest in the acquisition.

While Skype’s main offering of free voice and video calls over the Internet has been the main driver of its growth, the service has been making substantial losses over the last 5 years. After the amalgamation with Microsoft, the Skype user base will jump from 107 million to 660 million, which should help improve the balance sheets.

Microsoft has also said that they will continue to support Skype’s non-Microsoft based platforms such as Mac OS X, Linux, Android, Blackberry, iOS and others.

For the past four years, the top place in the Brandz 100 list was held by Google, but this time they have been toppled over. Apple’s iPhone has been doing very well and is indeed very popular but this change in valuation is largely being attributed to the iPad.

Apple has increased its valuation by $137 billion or 859% since 2006, when the Brandz Top 100 list was first introduced. Since last year, Apple has increased its valuation by $153 billion or 84%.

Google has fallen to spot number 2 and has also lost 2% in terms of valuation, in spite of the fact that their Android OS is doing quite well.

Popular social network Facebook has also entered the top 100 list for the first time this year and is placed at number 35 with a valuation of $19.1 billion.

Amazon has shown the greatest rise in position from number 46 last year to 14 this year, with a valuation of $37.6 billion.

Technology based companies held 6 out of the top 10 spots in the list. These were Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, AT&T and China Mobile.

Among the losers in this year’s ranking were Nokia, which has fallen 38 places and is now ranked 81, and Nintendo, which has fallen 47 places and now ranks 79 in the list.

The Brandz index uses various parameters to judge the top 100 brands in the market. These include brand equity surveys and financial data from analyst reports. The future growth potential of the brand as well as the bond it has with users is taken into consideration.

The payment will be in the form of Facebook credits. Each of the selected ads watched by a user will entitle the user to one credit. One credit is equivalent to 10 cents. These credits can later be redeemed to purchase goods from the real world.

This has been made possible after the social network introduced Facebook Deals, which is similar to Groupon’s daily deals. Earlier, users could make use of their credits only to buy virtual goods such as virtual games.

At present, game publishers such as CrowdStar, Zynga, and Digital Chocolate have tied up with Facebook for this new payment scheme. Facebook is reportedly in talks with others such as Sharethrough, SocialVibe, Epic Media and SupersonicAds to sign up for this new offering as well.

They are also trying to forge a similar deal with TrialPay, which will provide additional analytics for advertisers.

So far, Facebook has suffered a low click-through rate for their ads and this new incentive should help to change that situation in the near future.

According to Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, which is one of the companies that has already signed up for the new service, this move is “a step away from interruptive advertising”.

Greenberg claims that his company will not just provide advertising in the traditional meaning of the term, but rather it will be in the form of branded entertainment, which users will not only be interested in seeing themselves but will also want to share with their friends.

This prediction has been made by analysts in BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast (2010 – 2015). According to them, social media ad spend is any money that is spent on advertising through the various social networks, but does not include virtual goods, rewards, social gaming etc.

At present the major source of advertising on these social networks is display advertising, which generated $2.1 billion in 2010 and is expected to generate $7.7 billion in 2015. However other sources of advertising such as ‘promoted tweets’ on Twitter which currently generate negligible income are likely to become popular by then and will generate $600 million.

This means that the compound annual growth rate will be 31.6%. At present of course the major amount of all the revenue is going to Facebook which is the most popular social network. It currently has more display ad impressions than both Yahoo! and Google. It is also expected that their ad share as well as revenue will further increase.

According to an eMarketer report last January, the ad revenues of Facebook for 2010 had gone up to $1.86 billion, but the revenue of MySpace had fallen. It has also been estimated that Facebook’s global ad revenue will go up to $4.05 billion in 2011.

Andrew Shotland of Social Local Media says “Over the next few years, social media factors will become a core element of various ad networks, which will in turn drive increased advertiser spending and innovation.”

They have selected Accenture PLC to build their official website, and Accenture in turn has decided that Google and their Video site YouTube are best equipped to handle the event.

It is estimated that about 400 million people will watch the event online. While this is a huge figure, nearly 2 billion are expected to watch on TV.

The official Google website will be the main source through which all authorised information will be relayed.

The revelation of the bride’s wedding dress is expected to generate much curiosity as also the kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

Live feeds will also be posted on Twitter and Facebook.  Other broadcasters like BBC and CNN will also be relaying the events and it is hoped that the internet will not collapse under the pressure.

In the past events such as the death of Michael Jackson and the inauguration of Barack Obama have generated a lot of interest but this event is expected to be bigger.

While experts believe that the internet will be able to hold out, it is hoped that the mobile networks, which will also see a lot of pressure will not collapse.

Prince William’s spokeswoman has said, ‘We can’t predict what is going to happen with the Internet, but we are doing this with Google and YouTube — and if anyone has the experience to do this, it’s Google and YouTube.”

A study by EUKidsOnline has found that 1 in 5 children under the age of 13 in U.K. and 38% across Europe have a Facebook page. The study was conducted across 25,000 users between 9 and 16 years of age across Europe.

The reason for the age limit is to protect children, who are vulnerable to bullying and other types of abuse by anti-social elements. This is very likely to happen as the children often keep their profile public and interact with people whom they do not “really know”.

The authors of the report have suggested that it might be better for the children if the age restrictions are abolished, so that measures can then be taken to protect those of a vulnerable age. At present this cannot be done as children just lie about their age in order to access Facebook.

Many, such as the charity organization Kidscape have condemned the suggestion as it would invariably lead to a lot more children accessing the social network.

The report also indicates that in households where parents set up strict guidelines about use of the net, instructions are generally followed. However, children who wish to fool their parents can easily do so, as they are often more net-savvy than the parents and also have easy access to the net.

The only practical solution seems to be for parents and guardians to repeatedly impress upon the child, the dangers of accessing the social networks at a tender age.

Unnamed sources at Baidu have claimed that the two parties have reached an understanding already. However, there has been no official confirmation from either party.

The report was first relayed on Sohu.com.

Stories about the possibility of such an agreement have been doing the rounds since last December when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg visited China on a business cum holiday trip. During this trip he not only met CEO of Baidu, Robin Li but also representatives of China Mobile Ltd. and Sina Corp.

It is believed that if such an agreement does reach the stage of execution, it will be in the form of a standalone service from Facebook. This service will not be connected to the international version, as they will be required to follow the censorship rules in China. At present topics such as pornography, gambling and criticism of the ruling Communist party are banned in China.

Facebook, Twitter YouTube etc. which do not follow these censorship guidelines have been blocked in China. Google on the other hand withdrew their operations from mainland China last year, following differences with the government.

Mark Zuckerberg will be required to sort out several issues not only in China but also in the U.S. before he is able to launch Facebook in China.

Launching the site in China, is now likely to be more difficult than ever before, because of the role which the internet in general and social networking sites in particular have played during the recent protests in Egypt, Libya etc.

A recent report released by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), indicates that researchers have proposed a new condition called ‘Facebook depression.

It is believed to affect pre-teens and teens, who are known to spend an inordinately long time on the popular social network, end up feeling depressed because they often believe that they are not as popular as some of their friends, or are not enjoying themselves quite as much as others.

Dr. Gwenn O’Keeffe, one of the proponents of the theory, says that such a realisation for a youngster “can be more painful than sitting alone in a crowded school lunch room” or even more painful than other real-life encounters that can make children feel down.

A lot of professionals have criticised this report. John Grohol of PsychCentral says the report is “at the level of a bad blog post written by people with a clear agenda”. Larry Magid of ConnectSafely.org says that it is a “made up” condition, which is not backed by research.

On the other hand, it has been pointed out that the article that is drawing so much attention is just one paragraph within a very good and informative report on social networks. Proponents of the theory claim that this passage has been taken quite out of context.

While the report about Facebook Depression need not be taken too seriously, it would be worthwhile for parents, paediatricians and counselors to talk to children about excessive use of social networks and other dangerous activities such as cyber-bullying and sexting and the related lack of fresh air and exercise that children who spend hours in front of a computer screen miss out on.

Eventbrite, an event registration company recently conducted a study on the effects of social media on social commerce. When activity such as a ‘Like’ on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter generates money for the company or event concerned, it is known as social commerce.

Analysts at eventbrite have been tracking the sharing behaviour that occurs on social networks, with a view to help event organizers improve their business.

They have found that it is no longer essential for event organisers to have a very large budget in order to reach a large target audience, as they can do this almost free of cost through the various social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Users were found to be more likely to share information about an event that they care about or are committed to. Thus, people who have bought a ticket to an event are more likely to inform their friends about it than people who have not bought a ticket.

Conversely, people are more likely to buy a ticket to an event if they are informed about it by someone who has already bought a ticket than when they are informed by someone who has not bought a ticket.

The study conducted last October found that the average value of a social share, measured as dollars per share through all social platforms was $1.78, while the dollars per share from Facebook was $2.53.

Over the last six months, the sharing activity on Facebook was found to be almost four times that on Twitter. This could be due in part to the larger user base that Facebook enjoys and in part due to the fact that relationships on Facebook are more like real-world relationships.

Networking events had a higher share rate than business events, conferences and seminars. Musical events and concerts also generated a much higher dollars per share value than fund raisers and social events.

Dollars per social share by event type

To conduct this study, Eventbrite used a set of in-house social analytic tools that provide tracking and analysis of each share that occurs.

As expected, Google continues to be the number one site, with a very wide margin. However, they have undergone a slight setback, as the number of unique viewers has gone down from 144.1 million in January to 141.1 million in February. The number of minutes spent online per session has also gone down.

On the other hand, Microsoft has had a very good month as they have risen from ranking seventh in January to ranking second in February. They have also had 48.8 million unique viewers in February which represents an absolute increase of 10.7 million visitors more than they had January.

Yahoo! has retained the third place as before and Facebook is now fourth in the list, in place of Viacom. VEVO, which was second in January, now occupies the fifth place, and Viacom is sixth, in place of Facebook. AOL has now taken Microsoft’s previous position at number seven. Turner Digital has retained the eighth spot in both months. Hulu, which was tenth in January, is now at number nine, and NBC has entered the list at number ten.

The study also shows that 170 million users watched online videos in February in the U.S. at an average of 13.6 hours per viewer and more than 5 billion viewing sessions.

It remains to be seen if the list will remain more or less steady in March or will change drastically again.