The pressure is on for Google to develop a social strategy. It should leverage the combination of +1 and its users’ Google identities to come from behind on the social graph. With the concept of identity, Google starts it’s social play from a much stronger position. Read more »
Hashable has a fun interface but is all business under the hood, according to founder and CEO Mike Yavonditte. With its ability to track and index your professional relationships and connections in real time, with social awareness and even geo-tagging, it is everything that LinkedIn isn’t. Read more »
Spiceworks has raised a $25 million fourth round of funding from Adams Capital and Tenaya Capital to continue building out a community of IT professionals that use the Spiceworks software to monitor their companies’ networks. That community is like a Facebook for IT. Read more »
The first quarter of 2011 saw plenty of competition between various web companies — and some heated tension, too. Content farms generated the most debate, with Demand Media’s IPO attracting attention and controversy and Google making a major change to its ranking algorithm. Facebook, meanwhile, maintained its heavyweight status online, but this time the social network’s impact was centered on social search, unified communications and comment systems. And Facebook’s ongoing dominance raised the question, Is there room for more than one social network? If niche networks like Quora and Color are any indication, the answer is “yes.” Additional companies mentioned in this report include Twitter, Groupon, Microsoft, LinkedIn and MySpace. To see the full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In a memo to Google staff, new CEO and co-founder Larry Page says employee bonuses are effectively on the line if the company’s efforts to add more social features don’t succeed. But the Google co-founder may find that you can’t threaten people into being social. Read more »
Can social Q&A sites really help you build your professional reputation? I’ve taken a look at three sites that offer similar functionality, yet are vastly different under the surface. Here is a breakdown of how to use Quora, Focus and Namesake to enhance your reputation. Read more »
Google’s launch of its new +1 feature is an attempt to add social signals to search, but it’s also an attempt to jump-start the company’s social-networking efforts, and that seems to have less likelihood of success. Why? Because people don’t go to Google to be social. Read more »
Social commerce involves businesses using online collaborative tools — social networks, real-time feeds and user-generated contributions, for example — in order to sell products and services to consumers. The space is now more dynamic than ever: Hundreds of startups like Groupon, Zynga and CrowdStar have emerged, and it’s also attracting the attention — and cash — of online giants like Google, Amazon and Apple. This report examines the factors propelling the sector’s growth, how it will evolve over the next one to three years and what that means for those companies involved. We also examine factors inhibiting the growth of social commerce, and the likelihood of fragmentation as more local markets emerge. Companies mentioned in this report include Groupon, Foursquare, Gowalla, Playfish and LivingSocial. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Although younger users of social networks are often criticized for engaging in “slacktivism” without any real engagement, a new study from the University of California found that younger Internet users become more socially engaged in the real world as a result of their online activities. Read more »
Asking thousands of strangers if those jeans look good on you might not have seemed possible only a few short years ago, but now it’s only an app download away, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg for the new trend of community-assisted decision making. Read more »
A study from the Pew Research Center found that Internet users are much more likely to be socially active offline as well as online, and that those who use social media and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are even more likely to be so. Read more »
Digital music alone hasn’t been enough to return the music industry to its former state of prosperity, and despite attempts by the likes of Apple, Google, MOG, Spotify and numerous others, a viable new business model has yet to emerge. But music is inherently social, and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
No set of fearless year-end predictions would be complete without setting expectations for what won’t happen in the coming year. Social media won’t replace search, nor will a single, dominant social media platform emerge. Meanwhile, will the government finally solve the privacy puzzle surrounding social media? ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Blame cord cutting, at least in part, for the drop in cable subscriber numbers in 2010. Looking towards 2011, we expect this trend could gather further steam thanks to bundled subscription offerings from players like Microsoft and Apple. We also expect a new iteration of the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
One of the keys to monetizing NewNet technologies like real-time feeds and social media will be harnessing the massive amounts of data they create. In recent weeks, there have been a handful of announcements illustrating creative ways of using this data. But most of them have ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Groupon is growing faster than virtually any other tech-related company in history, including Google and Facebook, and is expected to close the year with revenue of more than $500 million. What then, are the lessons retailers and other companies can learn from the such incredible ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
“Local” and “social” go together like bread and butter. Add “mobile” and you’ve a trio of hot technologies that’s attracting capital from investors and big companies alike. For consumers, there are obvious synergistic experiences: mobility is local by definition, as are many social activities like physical-world ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Originally intended to get shoppers out in full-force to start the holiday shopping season, Black Friday has become a holiday unto itself, where bargain hunters shake off their turkey hangovers to wake up before dawn and chase amazing deals. But as is the case with most ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
You want to badly share that photo of your cat wearing its pumpkin costume. It’s understandable. You’ve got an iPhone and Internet access, but which app best suits your needs? There’s recently been a mini-boom in social photo applications, so we’re breaking down the top contenders. Read more »
As most of the world is aware, Facebook launched its Social Inbox feature last week. The unified messaging system pipes online and mobile communication functions people use — SMS, instant messaging, Facebook chat messages — into a single inbox. On the face of it, having just ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
When people mention the intersection of social media and TV, often the reaction is a knee-jerk exclamation of how they don’t want the constant stream of status updates and tweets creating a visual mess on their TV screens. After all, TV is our lean-back, decompress and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
How big is big enough? When do new consumer technologies really start to catch on? What happens when they do? These are questions of critical mass, and there’s plenty of historical evidence to point at the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
As website owners try to boost the amount of time their users spend online, the all-in-one site toolbar is becoming more popular. Wibiya, which makes a toolbar that allows users to chat and share links on Facebook and Twitter, is launching a developers platform and API. Read more »
As social networks become more popular, the challenge of finding relevance amid all the noise becomes exponentially harder. Klout, which is trying to build a comprehensive database of social influence online, says it is now integrating activity from Facebook into its service as well as Twitter. Read more »
Google is reportedly testing the integration of Twitter within Google News, which would allow users to login and see news stories shared by people they follow. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said the web giant would be adding “a social layer” to all its services. Read more »
Social gaming has been the biggest success story of the four-year-old Facebook Platform, but only now is Facebook rolling out a plan to offer a dedicated gaming experience, get game developers to stop spamming its non-gaming users, and make some serious money off of ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
LinkedIn has agreed to acquire ChoiceVendor, a startup that allows companies to rate and review business-to-business service providers. The acquisition appears to be designed to improve LinkedIn’s ability to offer recommendations and other social features to its members and the companies that use the social network. Read more »
Google CEO Eric Schmidt made some comments last week about the company’s plans to get more social, and they showed how little the web giant understands what it is up against. Schmidt said the company intends to “add a social component” to its existing products. Read more »
Vic Gundotra, who as Google VP of engineering was been responsible for areas of the company’s mobile and developer relations, has been charged with leading the company’s efforts on social, TechCrunch reports this morning and I’ve heard as well independently. Read more »
According to a tweet from Digg co-founder Kevin Rose, Google is working on a Facebook competitor to be called Google Me. But while the search giant has every reason to want to do such a thing, the odds of it actually succeeding are extremely small. Read more »
Yahoo is doubling down on its bets on social networking, but is doing so by effectively outsourcing its social efforts to Facebook. The web portal is launching enhanced Facebook integration, along with a revamped personal profile feature called Yahoo Pulse, and new Google Buzz-style email features. Read more »
Google unveiled Google TV at its I/O conference on May 20, promising to revolutionize the TV ecosystem by giving people “the power to experience what they love on TV and on the web on a single screen,” while turning the living room “into a new platform for innovation.”
It’s a promise made by others (including no-less formidable innovators such as Microsoft and Apple) but never delivered on. Much has changed since Microsoft failed with Web TV, however, and even since Apple introduced (and has since largely ignored) its Apple TV. The amount of premium video content available on the Internet has grown exponentially, while faster broadband connections have made delivering high-quality video over IP networks feasible. In this research note, we look at why the time is ripe for Google’s offering to succeed, what it si, and its potential impacts on the TV ecosystem, including users, hardware providers, app stores, content providers, distributors, and competitors (including Apple, Microsoft, and independent IP video platforms). Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google says it’s willing to accept its shortcomings on social and bring in a “Head of Social” to set the right course. The company has hired an executive recruiter to fill the position, and is currently in the process of casting its net widely. Read more »
Who said that the advertising models of print and yesteryear would be sustainable online? Everyone just hoped they’d translate, because porting old models onto new platforms didn’t require much innovation or effort. Read more »
eBay CEO John Donahoe says the company wants to make its PayPal unit the de facto payment system for Facebook games, Twitter money-sharing and every other kind of social game or service. But PayPal has some work to do before it deserves that position. Read more »
Yahoo, like Microsoft and Google before it, has struck a deal to get access to Twitter’s real-time firehose of tweets. It’s also announcing plans to integrate Twitter across all its sites, as part of Yahoo’s big strategy to be an aggregator for the social web. Read more »
Google reportedly plans to add a stream of recent status messages and media from users’ contacts to Gmail. It’s a good idea, following Google’s stated goal of combining social features across its products, but one that will have to be executed well. Read more »
Though Google’s social strategy has been catch-up at best to date, the company does have a master plan — at least according to engineering director David Glazer. He said across a variety of products, Google wants to make it valuable and easy to harness social information. Read more »
Bolstered by arrival of the 3GS, launch of in-app purchasing and push notifications, the iPhone apps of 2009 have become richer and more robust experiences. Across 11 categories, here were this year’s standouts. Read more »
Words occupy so much of my waking life that dictionaries are also devotional texts for me. As I become less dependent on traditional books and print media and more involved with web tech and digital publication, my desire to find a truly great dictionary web app […] Read more »
