A lot of the attention on Google+ has focused on whether it’s a “Facebook killer,” but it’s actually more likely to become a competitor for Twitter than Facebook. Is the Google network just benefitting from “shiny new object” syndrome, or could it pose a real threat? Read more »
The web may be more social now than ever before, but according to a recent study, there’s still a lot more room to grow. Fewer than half of the world’s top websites link to Facebook or Twitter on their front pages, according to a new research. Read more »
As The Economist argues in a series of articles about the future of media and the rise of social media, what we are starting to see taking shape looks a lot like the coffeehouse-and-pamphlet era of the early 19th century. But is that a good thing? Read more »
Google+ is already popular, and it isn’t yet showing any signs of slowing down. If you’re already in or if you’re eagerly awaiting an invite, there are a few ways you can improve the experience when accessing Google’s new social network from Mac and iOS devices. Read more »
Everyone’s been trying to understand whether the newly-launched Google+ can really challenge Facebook for the Web’s social crown. So what can you learn when take one of the crucial moments in anyone’s life and compare the social networking contenders head-to-head? I decided to find out. Read more »
On this new Alive Web, what we miss doesn’t matter. What matters is the connection and the interactions. And Google Hangouts, one of the features in Google+, is the killer app of the Alive Web. Read more »
Last month, Facebook came under fire for enacting new spam controls that disabled developer apps without prior notification. Facebook has softened its spam control policy and is now giving developers tools with more insight into when their apps are setting off spam alarms. Read more »
GigaOM conducted a survey over the Fourth of July weekend of GigaOM readers regarding Google+’s chances for success, its competitive weapons and its likely impact on the competitive social media environment. Here’s a snippet of what we discovered about the prospects for Google’s latest social venture. Read more »
According to database pioneer Michael Stonebraker, Facebook is operating a huge, complex MySQL implementation equivalent to “a fate worse than death.” It’s actually a predicament all too common among web startups, for which the solution might be a class of databases referred to as NewSQL. Read more »
Even after a string of revolting revelations, the closure of Rupert Murdoch’s scandal-plagued British tabloid, the News of the World, has come as a major surprise. But the social media bandwagon is already claiming — wrongly — that it should be seen as a victory for Twitter. Read more »
Skype, the Internet telephony company that is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft has one ambition — get to a billion users – even if it risks the company losing control over its customers. And that just is fine for Facebook. Read more »
Facebook’s approach to data is that of a one way street. Use any of its products — Connect, Comments, Likes — and you keep sending data into the giant Facebook brain. When you want to take something out of the Facebook borg — well, tough luck! Read more »
Facebook’s Skype integration involved a lot of slimming down of Skype’s native client and making it work in a browser, creating the back-end integration between Facebook and Skype and scaling up Skype’s network to handle the expected flood of traffic. Read more »
If you think people are over-sharing on the Internet today, brace yourself, says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. As the sharing booms, so will the online data. And Facebook plans to build more of its own data centers to deal with the coming data boom. Read more »
Social networking startup Namesake launched an iOS app Tuesday. The app brings Namesake, which we billed as “Facebook for the self-employed” last year, to Apple devices in wrapper better suited for mobile access. The app is good enough to merit a look, even for non-Namesake users. Read more »
Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype that enables one-on-one video chat within the social networking website.The video chat debut is just the first of what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would be a series of launches the company has planned for the near future. Read more »
Facebook launched a bunch of new features Wednesday, including group chat, a redesigned chat user list, and the biggest of all, video chat via a partnership with Skype. It’s this last one that will have the biggest implications for most average Mac users. Read more »
The long awaited partnership between Facebook and Skype finally became real. However, someone at Skype was a tad over-eager to share the news and tweeted it out about minutes before Zuckerberg got on stage. Read more »
Facebook’s blocking of a Chrome extension that allowed users to export their friends’ email addresses has reignited a debate over who should control that kind of data — should you have the right to export it, or is Facebook right to prevent you from doing so? Read more »
Web discovery engine StumbleUpon is now the biggest traffic driver among social media websites in the US, according to global web analytics service StatCounter. The company unseated Facebook at the top during June 2011 .The ten-year-old StumbleUpon has been working diligently at its comeback since 2009. Read more »
Twitter is reportedly raising a huge new round of financing that could value the company at more than $7 billion. The company is clearly taking advantage of a red-hot market for tech stocks — but can it build a business that justifies that kind of lofty valuation? Read more »
Obama will have a virtual town hall meeting with Twitter Wednesday, as he uses social media to reach out to voters and constituents. But more importantly, the Twitter Town Hall will provide Obama and the White House with invaluable data about what voters are thinking about. Read more »
Nokia’s problems have been well-documented in recent years — but a new report suggests that its difficulties stretch back much further, starting with an incident when executives secretly splashed out $200 million to keep 45 top staff who wanted to defect to a rival startup. Read more »
A Wall Street Journal article argues that the proliferation of “like” buttons, retweets and other online voting encourages conformity in online behavior, and that we don’t reveal our “true selves” online because we are afraid of being voted down by the crowd. But is this true? Read more »
Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko is the latest dictator to try and quash unrest by banning social networking sites. But whether or not his fears are accurate, the truth is simple: many countries now think the success of the Internet is indistinguishable from America’s political ambitions. Read more »
We are the connected generation. As the opportunities to share information have become more ubiquitous, there has been an increasingly hyped-up debate and concern around the topic of privacy. But is privacy really the issue? Read more »
It looks like that “awesome” announcement next week by Facebook won’t be about an iPad app or an HTML5 platform. TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook will announce next week that it will be partnering with Skype to bring video chat to its users. Read more »
Hulu’s Facebook Connect integration apparently isn’t going as well as planned. The feature has been pulled offline after people reported having issues with the sign-in process earlier today, with some being exposed to other users’ account data in the process. Read more »
Zynga on Friday filed its S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $1 billion. The IPO filing comes just one day later than many people expected — reports have been bubbling for weeks that Zynga was planning to file its S-1 sometime in June. Read more »
While some mainstream media outlets are trying to take advantage of social tools to engage with their readers, others still seem stuck in the Dark Ages. The latest example of a misguided policy comes from E.W. Scripps, which owns a chain of newspapers and TV affiliates. Read more »
Hulu is getting a lot more social with new features based on Facebook Connect. Users will now be able to log into the service with their Facebook account, comment on specific moments in a show they are watching, interact with friends and discover new content. Read more »
Is Facebook’s long-awaited iPad application finally set to launch? Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly said the company plans to “launch something awesome” next week. The new product was developed entirely at Facebook’s Seattle office, the company’s only engineering outfit outside of its Silicon Valley headquarters. Read more »
Flipboard, one of the first iPad applications to really take advantage of the new device’s touch interface to create a kind of digital magazine, today released a series of updates and new features that turn the app into even more of a tablet-based newsstand. Read more »
This week’s news from Google was the most exciting thing I’ve heard from the company in years. After languishing with social and its utter failures with both Google Wave and Google Buzz, the company is putting an intriguing product to market: a social network. Read more »
Google’s new social network offers a nice collection of features and a great design, but none of these things is enough to create a social network that people want to keep using — that requires a critical mass of users, and Facebook is leading that particular race. Read more »
There has been an explosion of content over the past five years — a trend that shows no signs of abating. In the land of a million channels, the filter will be king. Value will accrue to those that aggregate and filter programming. Read more »
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is stepping away from the site’s day-to-day operations. While many folks in the industry have seen this coming for months, the news has still raised eyebrows. But Stone is not the first person to step away from a company he helped start. Read more »
A month after its debut as a public company, LinkedIn isn’t resting on its laurels, and Wall Street is reacting positively. Several new initiatives unveiled this month suggest the professional social network might have the steam to compete with the Googles and Facebooks of the world. Read more »
Could Twitter have saved everyone’s favorite canceled show, Arrested Development? That’s one of the questions raised by a report released today that looks at the social engagement on TV viewers online. Turns out, viewers tweet because they want to help keep shows on the air. Read more »
Skype quietly added some XMPP support to its most recentbeta last week. Adopting the open protocol helps Sype to integrate with Facebook, but it could also be used for interoperability with other IM platforms. Just don’t expect to call your Gtalk friends any time soon. Read more »
