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?

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

A tweet sent out by Experian Hitwise says that Google has seen a growth in their membership last month, that has more than doubled the number of users they had in the previous month.

According to Hitwise, Google+ had more than 49 million visits in the U.S. itself in that month, which is a 55% increase in traffic compared to the month before.

Google+ share of visits to all categories. Source: Experian Hitwise

Analyst Paul Allen, who is the founder of Ancestry.com, has estimated that Google+ now has over 62 million users, and, of this, 25% of users have signed up in December itself.

While these figures are insignificant compared to the membership that Facebook has (over 800 million) the growth rate itself is significant. In fact, Facebook could not cross the 60 million mark until four years after it was launched.

According to Paul Allen, over 625,000 members are signing up every day. Part of this growth is definitely due to the fact that over 700,000 Android devices are being sold every day, and Google+ is integrated into many of these devices, making it easier for users to sign on.

The holiday season, TV commercials and celebrity endorsements may have further contributed to the growth.

Google has refused to confirm or deny the numbers.

It is being further estimated that at this rate, Google + will cross the 400 million mark by the end of this year.

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.

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.

Knol, Google Wave, Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal (RE<C), Google Friend Connect, Google Gears, Google Search Timeline and Google Bookmarks Lists will be shut down permanently over the next three months.

The products didn’t quite take off as Google had hoped and are therefore being shut down, in Google’s own words, with the aim “to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience.”

A lot of the engineering resources at Google seem to be redirected towards making Plus a hit. A host of new features are seemingly added to the new social network each month. One of these new features is an advanced search option, allowing users to filter search results by author and to browse through the currently trending topics at that point in time.

Similar to Twitter, the trending topics on Google+ show users what are the most popular topics at the moment, and allow them to dive into conversations related tot hose topics.

Google+ search along with trending topics

Now, when a user carries out a search, the trending topics will be displayed in a column on the right side of the page. Users click on any of the trending topics to conduct a search for that topic, which again is very similar to the functionality in Twitter.

Users can also narrow down the search results by using the filters provided at the top of the page, to narrow the content by type – everything, Google+ posts, people and pages or Sparks – and the content source – everyone, circles or self. At present, these tools are available only after a search has been conducted. However, it has been reported by The Next Web that users are asking for the trends results to be added to the main page on Google+.

Another interesting feature that has been spotted recently is the integration of Google+ with Google Places. A number of local searches now show the listing accompanied by the profile image that has been pulled from Google+. When users click on this logo, they are taken to a Google search results page that lists the Google+ Page and provides the user the option to directly add that Page directly to their Circles.

Google+ profiles featured in Google Places search results

This is yet another service that the search giant has integrated with Google+. Even though the network has been criticized for its lack of activity, the developers seems to be determined to make it succeed by placing it in front of users of all other Google services till they eventually wear down and decide to use it!

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.”

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.

By using the new +1 Button users can now share links to pages on Google Plus. In other words, if a visitor to a site wants to start a conversation about some content they like, it becomes very easy to do so.

Another improvement released with the new version of the button is the launch of +Snippets. Publishers can customise the name, image and description that appear when content is being shared.

Lastly, Google have added inline annotations, which improve engagement when users see a recommendation from a friend regarding a particular piece of content.

Google +Snippets showing when a user shares a +1

In order to start customising the snippets that show up when users share content on Google Plus, publishers need to add the correct schema.org attributes to the Meta data present on the page. The name, image and description have to be added to the code either in the HTML page body or head.

Inline annotations include the name and profile photo of the persons who have +1′ed the page. When the next user sees the name or image of a person he / she knows he / she is more likely to pay special attention to the content on that page.

Publishers must update the +1 button in order to ensure that all these changes are incorporated onto their site.

The new features are being gradually rolled out. In order to test these new features, users can join Google+ Platform Preview group.

A number of spy cam websites have grown in popularity. These sites encourage users to photograph or video persons they find attractive and share those photos and videos online. Other users of the site can then rate these photos and video based on the appearance of the subject.

More often than not, the person who has been photographed is unaware of it. In fact, sites like TubeCrush specifically reject any “staged” photographs. Photo submission guidelines on the website state, “We won’t use any photo that looks like it’s a setup, don’t cheekily try and get your friends on here boys and girls.”

As a result, it may be quite by accident that the subject of such a photograph may come across his own image on the Internet, or worse, may be informed of it by friends or family members who see the photo.

A London commuter recently featured on TubeCrush 

TubeCrush was set up about seven months ago by four youngsters, Steve Motion, Gemma Dean, Andy Kaufman and Michael Sparrow, from South London. The idea emerged while watching a dating quiz show.

So great has been the success of this site that they now have a similar site New York City, called SubwayCrush, and they plan to set up sites in other cities. They have begun to sell branded merchandise online.

Several other social networks are dedicated to helping commuters date other commuters or post messages to find commuters they struck up a conversation with (or even just smiled at). While these sites have been set up without any malicious intent, their ethics are questionable, at best. If a user does not like the idea of his / her photo being circulated and rated on the Web, a removal request option is usually available. However, for users who are unaware that they were even photographed, this isn’t much use.

Transport for London says that since the London Underground is a public area, taking photographs of people is legal.

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.

This app helps users to organise a get together or events with their friends. When a user wants to know where his friends are, this new app makes it very easy for him to do so.

Users just have to invite their friends through this app, and when they agree to join, both sides will be able to see each others’ locations.

In order to use this app, the user has to sign up using his phone number. Then he can invite all his friends through his contact list and also tell them the reason for the invite.

At this time he can also specify the amount of time for which this invite will hold good. Once that time limit is up, the invite expires automatically and the location sharing stops automatically.

The friends receive a text message with all the details on their Windows Phone. Those who decide to join in will be visible along with their location on the map. The map can be extended or narrowed down to include a larger or smaller area as required.

All those who accept the invite will be able to see each others location. The participants can also update their status through messages. To see a particular person status update, one must click on the user tile of that person. To see the status of all participants, one must click on the People tab.

A person who wants to stop sharing his location has to tap ‘leave’ on the People tab. He can also send his friends a status message to indicate that he is leaving the group.

At present this app is available only on the Windows Phone in the U.S. but is likely to be added to other devices in the future.

This activity is likely to become very popular as it has been found that 73% of users engage in mobile social networking on a daily basis.

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.

It had been decided as a matter of policy that the newly launched social network Google Plus would only allow accounts of people who used their real name in the account.

When Google put this policy into action, they unwittingly ended up deleting the accounts of some genuine users as well.

Among them were Limor Fried – AKA Lady Ada, and A.V. Flox, and even an ex-employee of Google Kirrily ‘Skud’ Robert.

The account holders whose accounts were deleted received a message saying, “After reviewing your profile, we determined the name you provided violates our Community Standards.”

This move on the part of Google has been criticised by several people as it can at best be termed as arbitrary.

Finally Google has responded to the controversy that has thus been created.

On Monday, Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz wrote, We’ve noticed that many violations of the Google+ common name policy were in fact well-intentioned and inadvertent and for these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing. We’ve noticed that many violations of the Google+ common name policy were in fact well-intentioned and inadvertent and for these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing,”

The policy is explained in section 13 of the company’s User Content and Conduct Policy. It says, “To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.”

Some of the erroneously deleted accounts have since been restored.

Google will henceforth implement some changes in the way this policy is used. The changes are as follows:

• Google will give users more warning and the chance to comply with the common name policy
• The company is improving the signup process
• Lastly, the search giant is exploring better ways to support nicknames, maiden names and pseudonyms.

As of now, users of this social network are allowed to keep their profiles private if they desire to do so.

However, come 31st July and these private profiles will be deleted. This move is likely to upset users, who wish to keep their profiles private as they are allowed to do on Facebook.

A statement issued by Google explains the purpose behind this decision. It says, “The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.”

It should be a consolation to users to know, that the only data they are required to provide on the public profile includes the full name and gender of the user. The user will have the ability to delete or hide any other information from the profile.

Another point in defense of Google is the fact, that even with Facebook, the users name gender and profile picture of the user is freely available to all, even with private settings since the last year or so.

Mark Zuckerberg had then explained that “The site has actually never worked in a way that you sign up and the only people who can see you or your information were your friends. The reason for that is … if only the people who were already your friends on the site could see your information then it would be really difficult to connect with your actual friends and actually be able to have meaningful interactions with them.”

Hence, even though Google has decided to disallow private profiles, they are not actually affecting the user’s privacy any more than Facebook is already doing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For some time now, educators have been making use of Skype to connect with each other. To help them further, Skype had launched this service in beta last December. It is now a full-fledged social network available across the world.

• Skype in the classroom

The service was developed with the help of teachers who were already using Skype for educational purposes. Through Skype In The Classroom, teachers from different parts of the world can get in touch with each other, to broaden their knowledge of a given subject or project., through an exchange of ideas and information.

Educators can find each other by filtering based on certain criteria such as subjects of interest, location and age group they teach.

During the beta phase itself, the service was available across 99 countries and was used by 4,000 people. Now, they have over 8,400 teachers on board with 290 project discussions.

Interested teachers can sign up using their Skype id, and create a profile by filling in their details, which will be stored in a directory. Others can then go through this directory to find teachers from the same field. They can also locate others in the same field by searching for specific keywords.

Discussion about Anti-Bullying project posted on Skype in the classroom

Educators will be able to enhance their own knowledge of a subject and then impart it to their students. The possibilities are endless. The service will also make it possible for students to be addressed by guest lecturers or even to have interactive sessions with students from other institutes.

Teachers in Peru could setup video conferences with teachers in England to teach their respective classes English & Spanish! Others could collaborate on anti-bullying and other social efforts that concern most educators.

A similar service, called EDge, was launched last year by The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which is a primarily American organisation. However, Skype’s worldwide user base might help make it a more popular choice.

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.

Users can access Twitter through TweetDeck, Seesmic, HootSuite, Twhirl and many other similar applications that were built for PCs as well as Macs. These applications have also been responsible, at least in part, for the growth of Twitter from 48 million tweets per day to 140 million tweets per day over the last year.

While most people would consider this growth to be good, the authorities at Twitter do not seem to think so.

Ryan Sarver, head of API and platform at Twitter, says that they want all Twitter users to be able to access the service in the same way. To enable this, Twitter has developed its own app to allow users to access Twitter from different platforms like the iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac and RIM Blackberry.

While this ensures that 90% of their users access Twitter through the official method, there is still a segment of users who use Twitter through unofficial apps. Twitter wants to stop this.

Official reasoning by Twitter for such a move is that if there are too many means to access their service, it leads to inconsistency and confusion among users. It has also been found that some of the client apps violate Twitter’s terms of service and privacy policy. Due to this Twitter has to revoke several API’s and apps every week. They also say that they’d like tweets and actions to be represented in standardised formats, such as ‘follow’, ‘favorites’ etc.

However, many industry insiders believe that the real reason behind such a move is purely monetary. Twitter wants to ensure that they are the ones who reap the benefits of their service, and so they want to ensure that Twitter ads are the only way to advertise on tweets.

At the same time Twitter has clarified that they have no intention of thwarting the development of services such as publisher tools and realtime data signals.

Expectedly, this decision has come under fire from a lot of developers. They too claim that Twitter is doing this to gain control of the service and increase their revenue generation through ads.

In other words, developers feel cheated, as Twitter has taken advantage of their apps and now that their purpose has been served the developers are being shown the door.

None of Google’s platforms have been particularly successful, or gained much popularity. Service like Google Wave have even been shut down.

Rumours that Google is gearing up to launch its own social network have kicked off once again. Last weekend, this story gained more credence, thanks to an article published by The Next Web.

The story indicated that Google would launch their social network, called ‘Google Circles’, in the month of May. It is believed that the network will offer facilities such as photo and video sharing and status updates.

The rumours ,which first began last summer, had suggested that the social network would be called Google Me. However, Read Write Web found out that the social network would supposedly be called Google Circles.

Google has so far denied that they are launching a social network by any name in the near future.

Chris Messina of Google, who is supposed to be one of the main developers of this new product, has told All Things Digital that he does not know what the story was talking about.

Tim O’Reilly, who is an expert on technological developments has further added to the confusion. He first tweeted that he had seen the Google Circles product, and that it was awesome. Later, however, he deleted the tweet and said that he had been misled by the article in the Read Write Web.

Only time might tell whether or not the rumours are true. Even if they are currently developing a product, it might never come out of the GooglePlex if limited tests show that the product is not likely to succeed.

Grindr is the largest all-male location based social networking app and was first launched about 2 years ago.

The app already has about 1.5 million users spread across 180 countries. Of this, about 56,000 are in the New York area itself and around 3,000 new users are joining the service every day. The average user spends about 1.3 hours on this app daily.

Grindr has been available on the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad for some time and was launched on Blackberry handsets recently. Now, Android users will be able to interact with users on the aforementioned devices. They will be able to view profiles and photos and also chat with each other.

New Android users will also get a a free trial run of Grindr Xtra for 7 days after they download and run the app for the first time. Grindr Xtra is 100% ad free, thus giving the user more browsing space, and users will be able to view up to 200 men in their area. They will also be able to add 50 favourites. Users will receive notifications even when Grindr is running in the background. To view multiple profiles the user just needs to swipe back and forth. The monthly cost of the service is $4.97, which is lower than most other dating services.

Compared to other dating service, gay or straight, Grindr is definitely far ahead of the pack. The service was built specifically for mobiles, which means that it is built to facilitate interaction between users on the go, who are typing on a small screen. The simplicity of the app is its greatest asset, and is likely to steer its growth further.

When the Nexus One and the Nexus S were first launched, they provided users with the ability to ‘Sync Friends with Contacts’. In other words, when Nexus handset users downloaded the Facebook App, the details of their Facebook friends, including their phone numbers (where available) were stored in the Google address book.

A user’s contacts from Google as well as from Facebook were, therefore, very well amalgamated with each other, making it is easy for users to access their friends’ details whenever they wanted to.

Now, Google has decided to discontinue this feature from the Nexus S. Once this sync feature is removed, Facebook contacts will be visible in the Facebook App but will not be integrated with the Android Contacts App.

Another strange aspect to this move is the fact that the sync feature will continue to exist on the Nexus One handsets, because, according to a Google spokesperson, “the Nexus One was preinstalled with Facebook”, so users would expect the integration of the two apps, which is not the case with the Nexus S. Google has also clarified that the sync feature will not be available on any future devices they launch.

The main grouse that Google has with Facebook is the lack of portability. While Facebook allows the import of data, it does not allow export, thus making the interaction with other sites a one-way deal. In other words, the availability of contact information from Facebook relies entirely on the connection between the two contacts, and could be lost from the Google Contacts App when a user breaks a social connection on Facebook.

While this is an internal problem between Google and Facebook, and should have been sorted out professionally by the two organisations, it is the users who will miss out on the convenience of having their mobile and social apps interconnecting.

The reasoning that Google has offered for this discontinuation is quite strange. They say, that if a user ever decides to quit Facebook, he will lose all this data. So they have decided to discontinue it before a user gets too used to it. They quite forget that ‘if’ a user chooses to quit Facebook, he can make alternative arrangements to save his data before hand.

It now remains to be seen how Facebook will react to this move.

The new project was announced by Deborah Liu, head of Commerce Product Marketing at Facebook, during the Inside Social Apps Conference held in San Francisco this week.

As the name suggests, the new feature will allow users to make purchases along with their friends. When user purchase some virtual goods, they can share this information with Facebook friends through their news feed. Friends who see this update can then buy the same product at a discounted rate directly from the news feed. Virtual goods purchased will have to be paid for using Facebook Credits.

Facebook has revealed that during the early testing stage of this feature, over 50% of users opted to share information about their purchases, with their Facebook friends.

While Facebook is just introducing the idea of social group buying on their network, a similar system is already very successful on Groupon. Facebook might have to play catch-up with Groupon, but they already have the advantage of having over 1/2 a billion users registered on their network.

Groupon was the first site to enable discounted deals through social group buying. Users identify a deal and then spread information about it to their friends, so that they can collectively buy the item with a volume-based discount.

Discounts through group social buying on Groupon

As of now, Facebook’s Buy With Friends system is limited to virtual goods. But it is very likely that if the idea is a success, the facility could be extended to the purchase of physical goods from stores, as with Groupon. If that happens, Groupon will have to face some severe competition, as Facebook’s large user base could also entice businesses to offer better deals to Facebook in the hope of luring more customers.

When a user makes use of a Facebook App such as check ins via Places or Likes, the new ad feature turns that user’s activity into an ad.

For example, when a user checks into a particular restaurant, the news feed for that user would automatically show a posts saying that the user has been to that place. If the restaurant wishes to, they can turn that news feed item into an ad for that restaurant, via Sponsored Stories.

User checking into a Facebook Place

Friends of the user will see the ad for that place on Facebook as an endorsement by that user.

Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Levi’s and Playfish are some of the organisations that have already partnered with Facebook to advertiser using this new feature. A few non-profit organisations such as Amnesty International, Women for Women and Donors Choose have also agreed to partnership with Facebook and trial this feature.

Sponsored stories can be set up on a pay-per-impression or pay-per-click basis. The new ad unit will initially be available on the home page and user profile pages. Later, it will be made available as a self-serve performance advertising tool for display across the entire site.

The Sponsored Stories will be shown in a special right-sidebar module. The name and profile photo of the user will also be shown. Comments by the user will be shown along with the ad – at present it is not clear whether Facebook will provide a mechanism for advertisers to prevent negative comments from being advertised.

Facebook expects that these ads will have more perceived value than the regular ads, as an endorsement from a friend should have more value.

Sponsored Stories are quite similar in concept to Promoted Tweets. The major difference is that with Sponsored Stories, the user decides the content of the ad whereas with Promoted Tweets the advertiser decides the content.

While uses do not have the option to opt-out of Sponsored Stories, their privacy settings will be respected. In other words, the ad will only be seen by those people whom the original feed item was meant for.

At the 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards, which were held last Sunday night, the movie, “The Social Network” won 4 top awards.

The film was nominated in 6 different categories, of which it won four. These are, Best Picture, Best Director for David Fincher, Best Screenplay for Aaron Sorkin and Best Score for Trent Reznor. The movie was also nominated for the Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor (Drama) awards, where it failed to make it to the top spot.

The Social Network was based on an unauthorised book about the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. It was reported that Mark Zuckerberg had some differences of opinion with the movie regarding the way they had portrayed the formative years of Facebook. However, it cannot be denied that the unprecedented success of the movie has can only help Facebook to become even more popular.

Golden Globe Awards are decided by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, an organisation composed of working journalists who cover the United States film industry for a variety of outlets, including newspapers and magazines in Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America. Today, the 90 members of the HFPA represent at least 55 countries and have a combined readership of more than 250 million.

Now that The Social Network has won so many Golden Globe Awards, expectations have been raised that it will also do very well at the Oscars, the nominations for which are due to be announced on the 25th of January.

All this celebrity exposure will only help Facebook grow further worldwide, not unlike the way Twitter started growing really quickly once a few celebrities hopped on board and started tweeting.

This new service has features that will help businesses that have a physical venue such as a store or restaurant, as well those who do not have a physical venue, but offer a service such as a TV channel, a university or an upcoming movie release.

Businesses with a physical venue, who wish to avail of this facility, will be required to follow a three-step process. They will first have to claim their business location. They then create a special for their clients who would check in to the location through Foursquare. Lastly, they would have to analyse the data they receive through the campaign to further improve their business.

Foursquare business page for AccuraCast

A Foursquare special can be any kind of discount or other inducement for users to check in via Foursquare when visiting the venue. New and regular customers can be lured and rewarded with different specials. This way, the business is not only exposed to the users, but also to all their friends and contacts on the network.

Above and beyond specials offered by the business, users can also earn badges and points from Foursquare, which get displayed on their profile.

Businesses that do not have a physical venue or do not host customers at their offices can also create a page on Foursquare. This page will have the logo and other details about the business. It will also be linked to other social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Users accessing these pages will be rewarded with badges from the business.

Foursquare brand page for Zagat

The Business Pages for brands are not yet open to the general public on a self-serve basis. Interested businesses will have to fill out and submit a form to Foursquare after which the page will be created. Foursquare will also provide these businesses with access to their Venue Stats dashboard, so that they can analyse the results of their campaigns.

Start here to claim your business page on Foursquare

Last September, rumours that Facebook was making its own mobile phone were fueled by posts on TechCrunch and Bloomberg. Both reported on tips from anonymous sources that Facebook had started making their own mobile phone. Facebook was supposedly manufacturing the required software, and the hardware was to be made by another manufacturer.

The continued growth and popularity that mobile social networking and Facebook in particular were enjoying made it seem logical that Facebook would try to integrate their apps into mobile phones. Since this was only possible if they had control over the operating system, it was believed that they would want to make their own handsets.

The rumours had even pinpointed two employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – who were supposed to be secretly working on the project.

Facebook was reported to be in talks with INQ Mobile to build the phone and AT&T was believed to be the chosen carrier, although nothing was finalised. The social network was supposedly considering the development of 2 handset models, one with a full QWERTY keyboard and the other with just a touch screen. The p hones were expected to be very reasonably priced.

These rumours were then laid to rest when a Facebook spokesperson clarified to Mashable that they were only interested in making mobile apps more social and not in building phones.

Now, the rumours have started afresh ever since a description of INQ’s new mobile phone surfaced. The description of the new phone was obtained via the Blutooth certification that was recently awarded to the device.

The new INQ phone is supposed to be an “Android smartphone built to make messaging faster and smarter”. It’s designed around the way people naturally communicate and has Facebook built into its core. The homescreen features multiple entry points to different Facebook functions, while a dynamic widget displays a feed of status updates, albums, videos and photos.

While a lot of the speculation leads one to believe that the original rumours were probably true, only a handful of people are in a position to verify the truth. Facebook did deny the rumours at the early stage. Though, that could be because it was probably too premature to admit to anything back in October. Whether Facebook denies this new set of rumours or not might give a better indication of the truth.

The said report was posted on Weekly World News. Some of the other reports posted on this site included talk about alien spaceship attacks in 2011, Michelle Obama being pregnant, and soon-to-be royal bride, Kate Middleton, being 36 years old. Nevertheless, a number of other blogs picked up this post and the hoax soon spread far out of control.

Users rushed to Facebook, forming groups to petition the site not to shut down and posted thousands of comments on the site discussing the likelihood of its closure.

The supposed reason for Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to shut down the most popular social networking site in the world was cited in a fictitious quote by Facebook founder, “Facebook has gotten out of control and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life.”

Facebook, on their part have denied any such decision. On their own Facebook Page they said, “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down, so we’ll keep working away like always. We aren’t going anywhere; we’re just getting started.”

In fact, when Mashable questioned Facebook about the rumour, Facebook’s director of corporate communications, Larry Yu said, “The answer is no, so please help us put an end to this silliness.” He added, “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down and there’s lots to do, so we’ll just keep cranking away like always.”

Anyone who thought about it just a little bit would have also realised how unlikely it was for a company, which is venture funded and has been as successful and grown as big Facebook, to suddenly decide to shutdown, especiall after receiving $450 million and $50 million in funding from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky technologies respectively.

Facebook fanatics can now breathe easy. They would also be well advised to think rationally before believing everything that is reported on the Internet.

During Le Web Conference in Paris, Sebastien de Galleux the co-founder of Playfish and the V.P. of EA Interactive said that one of their very popular games, Pet Society, has about 20 million users at present, which is almost double the number of users for World Of Warcraft.

Playfish, the company that created Pet Society was bought by EA Interactive last year for the sum of $400 million. Pet Society became extremely popular on Facebook. The game allows Facebook users to choose a pet, modify it to suit their taste and then play games, decorate their virtual house and even bring gifts for their friends when they visit them. Some of the customisations and gifts need to be paid for (with real money).

It was revealed that Pet Society sells about 90 million virtual goods daily. Even though most of the goods are very cheap and cost only a few cents, the total revenue generated is a substantial sum. Mashable reports that annual sales from the social game add up to about 32.85 billion goods per year. This figure, according to Galleux is more than what eBay sells, even though it is worth a lot less in real terms.

Galleux says that users are asking for more payment options for the purchase of bulk goods. He also revealed that although Pet Society is extremely popular it is not the most popular game. At present, the most popular game is FIFA Superstars and users are even willing to pay £5 to buy a good player.

According to James Binn, the head of PC gaming at Future Net, “Online games are bigger than ever – driven by social platforms like Facebook, which enable fast, cheap marketing and connect people in new ways.”

Research from the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers indicates that Facebook is now used to procure evidence for 1 in 5 divorce cases in the U.S.A. 81% of lawyers admit that evidence from social networks has been used more and more frequently over the past five years.

People often get in touch with old friends and flames over social networks and can end up rekindling old relationships, often exchanging inappropriate or sexual conversations with each other. They might tag themselves in photographs documenting happenings contrary to what they state in court and they might post status updates that contradict their testimonies.

Of all the social networks, Facebook was used most often as a source of evidence, by as many as 66% of divorce lawyers. MySpace was used by 15%, Twitter by 5% and 14% said they use other social media sources.

Marlene Eskind Moses, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says, “As everyone continues to share more and more aspects of their lives on social networking sites, they leave themselves open to much greater examinations of both their public and private lives in these sensitive situations.”

It is ironic in some ways that the same networks that help to rekindle past relationships are being used as evidence in court proceedings on the breakdown of current relationships.

This new feature, will allow Facebook users to correspond with their friends through any of the various channels such as email, chat, SMS and instant messaging that is convenient to the user. The recipients of these messages, on the other hand, will be able to receive their messages through any of the channels that they finds convenient.

Joel Seligstein, the Facebook engineer who announced the launch on the company’s blog, says he is “relieved he no longer needs to keep track of which friends like texts vs. email vs. chat.”

Facebook will provide an @facebook.com email address to all those who want it. People will then be able to email others, irrespective of whether or not they are on Facebook.

Messages lies somewhere between email and chat, in terms of functionality. Users can communicate simply by selecting the name of the person they wishes to converse with, without having to remember telephone numbers or unintuitive email addresses.

Users will be able to adjust their settings, so that they only receive emails from people they want to. Other emails will bounce. Users will thus be able to control their correspondence and won’t have to be bothered by messages from unwanted sources.

Messages sent by friends will be organised in one folder, while other messages such as bills and bank statements will be clubbed together in an ‘Other’ folder. This feature will also organise all messages between two people together in one place, thus providing a record of all the conversations they have had with each other.

While this feature will compete with other email sites such as Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg clarified that it is certainly not intended to be an “email killer”.

Pros & Cons

Like all new features this one too, has its pros and cons.

It allows users an ot-in feature to turn on or off their emails and SMS accounts. It is also user friendly and the registration procedure is quite simple. The service also provides an intimation in the inbox if the chat feature is closed.

However, the collection of all the messages between two persons may just end up creating more clutter. The feature is still at a very preliminary stage and if it is anything like Facebook chat, it is likely to require a lot of debugging before users abandon their email accounts to solely use Facebook messages.

Facebook launched Places in August this year. The  service paved the way for Deals by allowing users to find out if their friends were in the same locality as themselves.
Deals, is a sort-of extension of Places. Now, when a user signs in to Facebook, the local businesses in that area will be able to inform the user of some of the special deals that they are offering to their clients. Users can then also inform their friends about these deals.

In order to find these deals, the user has to touch Places and then check in on touch.facebook.com or via the latest version of Facebook for iPhone. Local businesses that are offering deals will be indicated with a yellow icon by the side. The user can then “touch” the place and check in to claim the deal by showing the phone at the concerned outlet.

Deals can be offered in different forms:

• Individual deals – where a discount or free merchandise is available
• Friend deals – which a user has to claim along with a friend
• Loyalty deals – for being a regular customer
• Charity deals – where the business will donate to a specific cause when the user checks in.

Facebook has already tied-up with over 20 retail chains  and they expect to host about 20,000 deals in the near future.

The world’s largest social network is no stranger to borrowing other peoples’ ideas and incorporating them into their own service. They’ve been accused of blatantly copying Twitter with their News Feed feature. Now, the new services are being likened to very similar offerings from Foursquare, Gowalla and Groupon.

The Facebook Friendship Page will contain wall posts, comments and any other content shared between two friends. It will also show all photos in which both friends have been tagged together. In effect, when two friends share a lot of things with each other and interact often with each other, their friendship page will really show up the evolution of their relationship.

Over a period of time, the relationship page will help to bring back memories of past events and occasions in which both the friends were involved.

To view a Friendship Page the user must go to their friend’s page and click on ‘Filters’, which is placed just below the comments bow on the Wall. Clicking the ‘Filters’ link on someone’s profile page shows the options to view posts by that person + their friends, just by that person or just by their friends. A fourth option, to view the Friendship Page has now been added here.

Once on a Friendship Page, users can see other suggested Friendship Pages in the right-hand column. They can also enter the names of any two friends and if they have permission to view the pages of both the friends concerned, the will then be able to view their Friendship Pages.

A Facebook Friendship Page

In spite of the restriction that users can see Friendship Pages only if they have the permission of both parties, it is highly probable that many users may object to this feature as being an invasion to their privacy, primarily because there is no option to turn this feature off, for now.

While sentimental and romantic people may enjoy this feature, some people may even think that it is now easier to be stalked. This could be in spite of the fact that the Friendship Page will only show to others, what was already public in the first place.

Use and uptake of this new feature could outweigh privacy fears. However, the secluded positioning of the link to access the feature will definitely be an obstacle to widespread usage. Morever, Facebook’s choice of placement for the link makes one wonder if there ever was any real demand for such a feature or if it’s just an idea to increase page impressions for advertisers.

Users must install the new Skype version 5.0 for windows to avail of the new facilities that were launched last week. After downloading the new version of Skype, users can import contacts from Facebook into their Skype address book by signing in to their Facebook accounts. They can then send an SMS or make a call to their Facebook friends. The Skype-to-Skype service via Facebook will be free of cost.

What makes this integration really interesting and far superior to many other Facebook integrations is that users will also be able to check their Facebook news feed, post status updates, like updates and add comments directly from Skype.

Facebook news stream on Skype

If users include a phone number on their Facebook profiles, they can receive calls from other users through Skype. This can be a call to a landline or a mobile number.

A new search feature will automatically shift the friends to the top of the listings. There are also plans to introduce a call conferencing facility for up to 10 people. This service will, however, not be free.

Ethan Beard, Director of Facebook’s Developer Network says, “We’re working with companies such as Skype to make it easy to find your friends anytime you want to connect.”

Call services are only available through the Skype interface. Users who have signed up to use Facebook on Skype won’t see any changes on the Facebook.com web interface.

This new service will be especially appreciated by those who stay far away from home, as they will find it easier and cheaper to stay in touch with friends and family.

Kirsty Cook-Bell, 33, who teaches at a school sponsored by a Christian charity got herself in trouble after some pictures of her on Facebook were discovered by her students.

The pictures, which show her in a bikini and blowing a kiss at the camera with lipstick smeared on her face while she was on vacation, have been described as being “semi-nude” and “inappropriate”.

Some of the tweets she sent out on her Twitter account have also raised eyebrows. One of them said, “Celebrating being able to slack off and get abuse from the public about my low life job!!!”

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers has also issued warnings to members of their union on their own Facebook page, about behaviour that could be deemed as inappropriate. Their advice includes ensuring that any contact with students is kept strictly within an educational context and setting privacy settings on social networks to control who can see private information.

While there will probably be an almost equal number of people who would support the actions of the teacher concerned, as those who will oppose her, the whole controversy could easily have been avoided if she had just taken care to mark her photos as ‘private’ thus ensuring that they were seen only by her friends and not by others such as her students or colleagues.

Facebook could also help ease such situations by publicising privacy controls more and working harder on making  it easy for users to protect their private information rather than driving users to share everything by default.

Based on a recent judicial case in the New York court, it would be wise to assume that nothing is completely private or irretrievable.

In the case of Kathleen Romano v Steelcase Inc. an office chair manufacturer, the plaintiff, Romano, had alleged that in 2003 during the course of her work, the chair that had been manufactured by Steelcase Inc. collapsed and she was severely injured. She not only had to undergo several spinal surgeries, which cost her over $200,000, but she also claimed to have never fully recovered from the fall. As a result of this, she said she could not continue working and remained mainly house-bound, thus losing the ability to enjoy life to the fullest.

The defendants, however, claimed that the plaintiff’s postings on MySpace and Facebook painted quite a different picture. FindLaw reports that she posted updates and photos of trips to Florida and Pennsylvania, showing that she was not really house-bound, and in fact was enjoying life.

New York state courts compelled the social networks to produce the details of the plaintiff’s postings as a necessary part of the evidence. In fact, the networks were required to produce even the deleted pages and other related material.

Read the full court order for Romano v Steelcase Inc.

This case should serve as an eye-opener to all concerned: Postings on social networks cannot be regarded as being 100% private, even if the user’s privacy settings restrict the postings to certain people only.

Also, material that has been deleted by users continues to be retained by the network as backup, for up to 90 days, and thus is not completely irretrievable, at least as far as legal matters are concerned.

With the number of Twitter accounts reaching 145 million, and continuing to grow, it would be difficult for users to decide which accounts they would like to follow and also to know whether or not the account they are following is genuine or not.

Bing recommending “influential” and “popular” Twitter users

Bing social will help these users by now recommending people who they think the user would be interested in following, based on the search he conducts.

When a user types a particular query, Bing will recommend three people related to the query, who would be most influential or popular with regard to that query.

Representatives of Bing have said that this facility has been “developed, to help consumers identify the most influential people to watch on Twitter based on their interests.”

The list of these recommended people is available on in the right hand panel of the Bing Social page.

The service also lets users know, whether or not the account they are following is genuine, by means of a blue and white check mark next to the name.

A similar suggestion feature has already been available on Twitter for a while now.