Why Google+ (Or Something Else) Can Take On Facebook & Twitter

However, whenever Google introduces a product, the world knows about.  If the product is bad, it flops. If the product is good, though, it succeeds and captures a sizable market share in an insanely short amount of time.

There is also the in-company advertising.

Google Chrome, for example, was heavily promoted. For a period, Gmail users would be pestered every now and about how Gmail runs faster on Google Chrome. The Google.com homepage also used to advertise Google Chrome.

Recently, Google took the opportunity to push Google Voice on Father’s Day (the advertisement was on the Google.com homepage and Google Voice).

Google+ potentially offers to greatest opportunity for in-company promotion.

So far, evidence doesn’t suggest that Google will push users to sign up for Google+, although I wouldn’t put it beyond them to do so.

However, what’s known is that Google will push people who signed up for Google+ to use it on virtually all Google properties.

Sign on to Gmail? It’s there! On Google documents? Click the button to share it! And no matter where you are, that ubiquitous Google black bar on top of all things Google will notify you if there’s a new event from Google+.

These prominent features of Google+ will likely get many users to a least use it once with every Google service.

Of course, if users find Google+ to be invasive (or deficient in other ways), they’ll drop it. However, the point is that Google+ will get more than its fair shake among netizens.

And if Google+ fails, like Google Wave and Google Buzz, Google can just try again. And again. Until it breaks through.

It’ll take many failures before users would actually shun Google social products and not give them a fair shake.

Once Google does have a social product that succeeds, expect it to go on a Chrome-like tear that’ll challenge Facebook and/or Twitter in no time.

Google isn’t going away on social.

About a year ago, Google leadership agreed that social networking is the future and decided on “a decisive and substantial response, including a significant deployment of personnel — right away,” reported FastCompany.

So even if Google+ fails, it’ll keep on trying.

I wouldn’t want to bet against Google eventually breaking through in social when they have this kind of determination and access to over a billion existing Google users.

Read on, here are more related articles you may like:

Google+ is a Facebook beater PLUS a social phenomenon: Nine reasons why

Google+ social network: Already got Facebook, why should I join?

Google+ versus Facebook: Will “something awesome” launch by Facebook include video chat and iPad app?

Article source: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/173298/20110702/google-invite-facebook.htm

Ashton Kutcher Tweets Advertisers Away From Village Voice

Ashton Kutcher and his tirade against The Village Voice to his seven million Twitter followers has successfully convinced American Airlines to stop advertising with the newspaper. Dominos may be next.

It all started with The Village Voice fact-checked Kutcher’s claim that “100,000-300,000 children in America [are] turning to prostitution this year” with the “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” campaign he’s leading with Demi Moore and other Hollywood celebrities. Their response published on the paper’s cover Wednesday, “Real Men Get Their Facts Straight,” claimed that the campaign’s very big number is in fact a misinterpretation of a figure of “at risk” children floated by University of Pennsylvania professors. The challenge drew Kutcher’s ire, and he took The Voice to task on Twitter for the escort ads in the back of the paper. He sort of hasn’t stopped tweeting about it since. We covered the spat in full on Thursday, just shortly after Kutcher tweeted, “Hey @villagevoice I’m just getting started!!!!!!!! BTW I only PLAYED stupid on TV.”

Well, he was not bluffing. On Friday, Kutcher went after The Village Voice advertisers. “Hey @disney @dominos are you aware that you are advertising on a site that owns and operates a digital brothel?” he tweeted first. Shortly after, he upped the ante with a very serious charge against The Voice: ”Hey @AmericanAir are you aware that you are advertising on a site that supports the Sale of Human Beings (slavery)?” Within two hours, American Airlines told Kutcher in a direct message that they had pulled their ads from The Voice website. He bragged, “Thank you! Via dm @AmericanAir – Heads up: Ads should be down w/in the hour. Blank ads are being served for now.” Thereafter, Dominos started talking to American Airlines and based on Kutcher’s latest tweet, sent Saturday morning, they may be the next to defect, “Thank you @dominos for you responsiveness and your support in the effort to create a human trafficking free internet.”

It’s unclear how much revenue Village Voice Media will lose in Kutcher’s continued assault. However, as Felix Salmon at Reuters points out, their diligence to fact-checking the sex trafficking numbers is basically admirable, but they were sort of asking for trouble when they picked on Kutcher:

There are, however, big weaknesses with the piece. For one, it gratuitously attacks Ashton Kutcher, a smart person who’s making the world a better place, in an unpleasantly ad hominemmanner. Kutcher is not the problem here. And it needs a lot more serious discussion of VVM’s own ethics with regard to running adult classifieds, including classifieds which turn out to be advertising underage prostitutes. You can argue about the efficacy of Kutcher’s campaign, but he’s not making the problem worse. VVM, meanwhile, is a non-negligible part of the problem, and needs be a lot more honest about its own place in the child-prostitution ecosystem.

The result of all this has been a destructive Twitter war with Kutcher, which has already resulted, among other things, in American Airlines pulling ads from VVM websites. VVM, in other words, could hardly have engineered a higher heat-to-light ratio if they’d tried. All of which makes the article look less a serious investigation, and more a noxious publicity stunt. If VVM is willing to examine its own behavior with regard to child prostitution in detail, then this road might have been well worth traveling. But if they just want to take potshots at Ashton Kutcher, I do wonder whether they will ultimately achieve anything at all, beyond a general notoriety.

We’re going to go ahead and venture a guess that Disney will not be happy to be embroiled in the controversy. Good luck, The Village Voice. At least your writers didn’t go on strike.

Want to add to this story? Comment below or send the author of this post, Adam Clark Estes, an email. Have a hot tip or story idea? Let us know on the Open Wire.

Article source: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/07/ashton-kutcher-tweets-advertisers-away-village-voice/39540/

FTC Launches Probe Into Twitter, UberMedia Rivalry

Twitter’s recent implementation of on-site advertising — and banning third-party ads — is one of the first major steps in a company-wide focus on acquiring and controlling more of its use than previously. In other words, Twitter wants to provide more of the services and features that, up until now, the company has allowed third-party companies to do. This includes photo and video sharing — the process that used to take Twitter users off the site has now been incorporated into the Twitter website itself.

The TweetDeck acquisition is another symbol of this movement, but UberMedia has felt it in other ways — most notably when Twitter took UberMedia’s access to Twitter offline for various TOS (terms of service) violations back in February. Insiders feel that these were all part of a concerted campaign…or at the very least a response to a campaign by UberMedia’s Bill Gross to provide either a competing product or a compelling and potentially overwhelming segment of the Twitter experience.

James Lee Phillips is a Senior Writer Research Analyst for IBG.com. With offices in Dallas, Las Vegas, and New York, London, IBG is quickly becoming the leading expert in Internet Marketing, Local Search, SEO, Website Development and Reputation Management. More information can be found at www.ibg.com. Dan Frishberg is The Money Man! He is an expert on investing, online stock trading worldwide and specializes in diversified portfolios.

Article source: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/173335/20110702/ftc-launches-probe-into-twitter-ubermedia-rivalry.htm

Will Google+ Be As Creepy As Facebook?

“Imagine someone taking your picture on the street. If they’re a ‘friend of a friend’ – and connected to a Facebooker who leaves their profile rather open – that random stranger who was interested in you can easily find out who you are, who you hang out with, where you go, and what your routine is – basically anything shared online,” said Kurt Roemer, chief security strategist at Citrix Systems. “Find someone walking down the street and instantly know everything about them? It’s creepy.”

Facebook is reportedly cooperating with regulators in the European Union, who have raised questions. And now the company is facing a call for an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Critics say Facebook has stacked the deck against consumers, taking away too much control and allowing the company to all these identified and cataloged images to its already staggering collection of personal information.

MUST READ: Google+ is a Facebook beater PLUS a social phenomenon: Nine reasons why

How about Google+ then? Will we have enough control over our identity and online assets?

In the past, Google has emphasized that its users have control over the personal data collected by the company, allowing them to see their data accumulated by Google through Google Dashboard. However, the massive database of personal information possessed by Google – especially through Gmail – may still creep you out. While Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, claims his policy as “to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it,” the line may long have crossed. In 2010, Google admitted that it had collected emails, passwords and web addresses from wireless networks, using Google’s Street View. Complaints have mounted and more may come – now that Google+ will attempt to take over your online space.

Google named its social platform Google+ because it is designed as an extension of Google, the company’s Senior Vice President of Social Vic Gundotra told Mashable.

As part of the initiative to have users think Google+ as Google itself, Google+ notifications appear in almost every Google product.

Once you join Google+, it becomes instantaneously ubiquitous, said Tony Bradley of PCWorld.

“Go to Gmail, and there it is–that ‘+Tony’ at the upper left on the menu of links with the other Google services. Go to Documents, there it is again. Go to Photos, and…well, it’s there, but now it says ‘+You’ instead of ‘+Tony’. Go to Calendar, and…well, it’s not there–but, you get the idea,” stated Bradley. “There are benefits to having the social network integrated with other areas of our lives. But, with other social networks, those integrations are a conscious choice made on a case by case basis. With Google+, your entire Google ecosystem is integrated whether you like it or not.”

According to Bradley, users do have an option to delete their Google+ content, or even the entire Google Profile. It’s just a bit tricky. The text at the top says, “If you delete Google+, Google attempts to restore your experience of other Google products to the way it was before you joined Google+, and to permanently delete your Google+ circles, posts, and comments.”

“Note the key word ‘attempts’. It comes up again if you choose to delete your Google Profile instead of just the Google+ content. ‘Over the next few days, Google will attempt to delete your Google profile and the features and the data that depend on it,’” said Bradley. Sure, the attempt will be made – whether successfully or not.

While some find the ubiquity of Google+ as efficient, others annoying and creepy.

Back in 2010, Schmidt stated regarding Google,

“With your permission you give us more information about you, your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches … We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less guess what you’re thinking about.”

With Google+, the creepy level too will certainly get a plus.

In order to beat Facebook as a social network, Google does have advantage if it’s right on the creepy line, sticking with the users on every Google page.

Given the growing concerns over security and privacy in the wake of recent hacking activities, the search engine giant will surely need to assure its users of a high privacy wall around private emails and private search, so that they do remain private.

That could be the toughest challenge ahead of the expanding Google empire.
Read on, here are more related articles you may like:

Also Read: Google+ social network: Already got Facebook, why should I join?

Google+ versus Facebook: Will “something awesome” launch by Facebook include video chat and iPad app?

Article source: http://newyork.ibtimes.com/articles/173343/20110702/google-creepy-everywhere-facebook-social-network-facial-recognition-data-privacy.htm

Rumor: Facebook to launch Skype video chat this Wednesday

First, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters that the company was planning to “launch something awesome” next week. Next, Facebook e-mailed journalists (including myself) with an invitation to a Facebook Event at 10:00 AM PDT on Wednesday July 6, 2011.

Now, the rumors and speculation are starting to pour in. The most likely one so far is the announcement of Skype video integration on Facebook (one of my many guesses when Zuckerberg first declared that something awesome was coming next week).

Facebook will launch an in-browser video chat product powered by Skype, according to a source with knowledge of the partnership cited by TechCrunch. The product will include a desktop component, but it’s not clear if you will need the Skype desktop client or additional software even if you already have Skype. Either way, it will reportedly be an in-browser experience.

Facebook and Skype first talked about a potential partnership in September 2010, but they could not reach an agreement. When Skype 5.0 was released in October 2010, the new version offered voice calling between Facebook friends, but it did not include a video chatting feature. The integration was a one-way road: only Skype added some Facebook features to its client.

Following rumors that Google, Facebook, and Microsoft were all interested in the Skype, the software giant swooped in. Two months ago, Microsoft announced that it was acquiring Skype for $8.5 billion in cash. The deal was approved by the boards of directors of both companies, and is Microsoft’s largest acquisition to date.

While Facebook failed to buy Skype, the company was still likely very pleased that Microsoft got the Luxembourg-based company rather than Google. Microsoft and Facebook have been partners for a very long time. One of the biggest reasons for this is simple: the software giant and the social giant realize they need to work together to compete with the search giant.

It all started in October 2007, when Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook. Then in October 2009, Microsoft announced a global partnership with Facebook to add status updates to Bing search results. In June 2010, Microsoft added Facebook integration to bing.com/social. In October 2010, Bing began showing what your friends have Liked and started to offer Facebook-powered people search results. Finally, in May 2011, Bing added even more Facebook features to its social search.

Even though Facebook began talking to Skype long before Microsoft was ever in the picture, something tells me the software giant’s pending acquisition didn’t hurt discussions between the two web companies. Once the deal goes through, and assuming this rumor ends up being correct, Facebook will finally be integrating something that Microsoft owns to its website. Previously, the partnership between the two has only seen Microsoft integrating Facebook into Bing.

Facebook reportedly has 750 million users, and since Skype only has 170 million users, it’s understandable what Skype gains from this integration. On the other hand, data has shown that Facebook users want voice (and video) chat, so it’s clear that the social network will benefit as well.

Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/rumor-facebook-to-launch-skype-video-chat-this-wednesday/1877

Facebook ‘Circle Hack’ Tool Organizes Friends Just Like Google+

Organizing your circle of friends on Facebook is becoming easier.

A new site called Circle Hack uses a drag-and-drop format similar to Circles on Google+ that lets you organize your Facebook friends into lists quickly and easily. Four Facebook engineers built the site, though it is not an official Facebook product, according to TechCrunch.

The new site does a pretty fair imitation of the Google+ Circles feature. Like Circles, the page is divided into two parts. Up top are all your Facebook friends represented by their name and profile picture on a contact card. Below your friends is the area where you create new circles. Each section has its own scroll bar and you can even resize each section by clicking on the dividing line between the two areas.

Here’s how you get started.

Log in to your Facebook account and authorize the site just like you would any other Facebook application. Then just start dragging your friends into the circles below. You can organize people individually or you can select multiple people at once. Circle Hack even includes a similar paperclip graphic to Google+ that shows how many people you’re dragging into the current circle.

Once you have a circle organized click on the “Create list” link that appears in the center of your new circle to name it. After that, you’re done and the next time you open Facebook, you’ll see the newly created list as an option in the “Friends” section and in your privacy settings.

There are some limitations you should know about.

Circle Hack does not let you delete a friend list and you cannot remove someone from a list once you’ve added them. To do that you’ll have to open Facebook and edit your new lists there.

The official way to organize your Facebook friends into smaller lists is a little bit harder to use than Circle Hack. You have to click the “Friends” icon in the left hand column of your Facebook home page. Then click on “Manage Friend List” and then on the next page click on “Create a List.” In the next pop-up window, you start clicking on your friends’ names to add them to your new list.

Whether you use Facebook’s official friends lists method or Circle Hack, to get them to actually be useful you have to either customize your privacy settings or your privacy controls for each individual post. This part Circle Hack can’t help you with.

Let’s say you wanted to restrict a post so that only your new Facebook friends list could see it. To start, you have to click on the lock icon below your News Feed’s text entry box and select “Custom” from the drop down menu. In the next pop-up window you have two choices: “Make this visible to” and “Hide this from.” If you want to share something with only your specific list then you’d select “Specific people” under the “Make this visible to” section and then type in the name of your new list and hit “Save Setting.” This is a one-time change, but if you plan to only share with a specific list or a specific set of lists you can check the “Make this my default setting” box in the lower left corner.

The other way to manage your friend lists is to click on “Account” in the upper right corner of your Facebook home page and select “Privacy Settings.” Then click on “Customize settings” and in the next window you can select a variety of share options for things such as your wall posts, check ins, photos, email address and so on. You manage these settings pretty much the same way as a wall post. Just click on the drop-down menu, select “Customize” and in the next window decide on the people you want to make this content visible to and the people you want to hide it from.

Facebook’s friends lists aren’t as easy to use as Google+’s Circles, but Circle Hack takes a little bit of the pain out of organizing your Facebook friends. Give it a try, but just remember Circle Hack appears to be more of a fun application than an industrial-strength Facebook tool.

Connect with Ian Paul (@ianpaul) and Today@PCWorld on Twitter for the latest tech news and analysis.

Article source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/235004/facebook_circle_hack_tool_organizes_friends_just_like_google.html

Obama to Host ‘Twitter Town Hall’

2:00 p.m. | Updated President Obama will welcome some of his Twitter followers to the White House next week for a Twitter Town Hall, where he will answer questions about jobs and the economy that people across the country can begin posting today, using the hashtag, #askobama.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and executive chairman who recently returned to the company, will be the moderator of the event, to be held Wednesday afternoon in the East Room.  He will pose the questions to Mr. Obama who will answer them for about an hour in front of two gigantic screens that will display the conversation on Twitter in real time.

It will be streamed live at http://askobama.twitter.com and http://wh.gov/live.

Twitter will select the questions, using curation tools and a group of Twitter users to help identify the most popular questions raised both before and during the event. Twitter will be relying on its own search and curation features as well as a company called Mass Relevance to help find questions and topics that are most frequently mentioned.

Macon Phillips, special assistant to the president and director of digital strategy, said that the event was an opportunity for the Mr. Obama to use the Twitter platform to hear directly from people outside of Washington.

“Twitter offers a compelling way to not only get information out but also to understand what people have to say about an issue,” he said. “That is why we are doubling down on our online engagement efforts.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Obama visited Facebook’s headquarters in California and fielded questions from Marc Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer. The event was live streamed and the questions and answers were displayed on Facebook’s platform.

Mr. Phillips said that there has been a new emphasis on using social media platforms throughout the federal government to help bolster customer service efforts as well as deliver, listen and collect information.

“It is a tool that helps people do their jobs,” Mr. Phillips said. “All of the people who have official White House accounts would tell you that it is a really helpful way to engage with people and bring in new ideas and be aware of new issues that they otherwise might have missed.”

Earlier this month, members of Mr. Obama’s campaign team announced that he would be posting his own tweets on the @barackobama Twitter account from time to time, signing them, BO. With more than eight million followers, that account is used primarily for his re-election efforts while the @whitehouse account is used for administration news and updates.

Adam Sharp, Twitter’s manager of government and political partnerships, said that the curators chosen by Twitter to help select the questions would be a politically and geographically diverse group. He said the curators would ask the people in their communities to highlight what they think are the most important questions for the president to address.

Curators will also be reposting questions and posting their own.

“We will have highly-engaged Twitter users from around the country to provide that geographic diversity to help identify good questions, “ he said. “This helps us make sure that we are addressing the concerns that the Twitter universe cares about. “

To participate, Twitter users need to include the hashtag #askObama when posting their question.  All questions with the hashtag will be included in the selection process. If Web users do not yet have a Twitter account, they can visit http://askobama.twitter.com to sign up and join the discussion.

For those @WhiteHouse followers who want to be considered to attend the Tweetup next week, they can sign up online at  http://WhiteHouse.gov/Tweetup, according to Kori Schulman, deputy director of digital content, Office of Digital Strategy.

Ms. Schulman, who is the person behind the @whitehouse account, said that the goal was to have more events at the White House so that posters can engage more with senior administration officials and with each other.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/obama-to-tweet-during-twitter-town-hall/

Developer network adds to Twitter headaches

By Dawn Lim, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Bring on the social media wars.

An antitrust probe into actions that Twitter Inc. has taken against one developer of outside tweeting platforms throws light on a turbulent, unregulated and rapidly-growing ecosystem of third-party Twitter application makers.

While companies that build nonofficial platforms to access Twitter drive up traffic on the microblogging platform, they are also seen as a threat to Twitter’s brand name and a source of friction. This is forcing Twitter, widely believed to be on track to an initial public offering, into a delicate dance.

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Fast-growing gaming company Zynga may soon file for an IPO, but there are questions of how much the company can grow outside of Facebook.

Antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission are reviewing interactions between Twitter and UberMedia Inc., according to reports on Friday.

“UberMedia has emerged as a rival to Twitter after building a large portfolio of Twitter-related services through acquisitions,” according to a research by Sysomos, a social media analytics group. Ubermedia’s portfolio includes Echofon, which allows users to call up Twitter on Apple Inc.’s


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 Android market.

In February, Twitter suspended two UberMedia services and charged that UberMedia had violated developer rules that were “in the interests of our users, as well as the health and vitality of the platform as a whole,” according to a statement.

Twitter had asked the company to change the name of its platform, then called UberTwitter, according to a blog post by UberMedia’s chief executive, Bill Gross.

Twitter complained that some direct messages, meant to be private, were posted on public websites, according to a separate blog post by Gross.

Neither Twitter nor UberMedia would provide further comment.

Some 600,000 developers are working with the Twitter application programming interface, a set of tools that allows developers to build software, company said. Some 900,000 applications have integrated with the Twitter API.

The Twitter ecosystem has seen over $1 billion in acquisitions, and over $475 million in venture capital investment, Twitter added.

In an attempt to steer an unwieldy ship, Twitter has tried to offer direction to developers, while brandishing the stick if necessary.

After a May developer event in San Francisco, Jason Costa, Twitter’s newly-hired developer relations manager, spoke glowingly of the gathering on a mailing list for Twitter developers.

But Twitter said in February that it turns off more than one hundred services that violate its rules of the road on an average day. “This keeps the ecosystem fair for everyone,” said a Twitter spokesperson.

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Dawn Lim is a MarketWatch reporter, based in New York.

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/developer-network-adds-to-twitter-headaches-2011-07-01?link=MW_latest_news

The NBA is letting the Miami Heat attend Chris Bosh’s wedding

The NBA has locked its players out, which means NBA team personnel can have no contact (right down to phone calls, emails, or Twitter conversations) with its players. Nobody can tape an ankle, join up as a fourth on the back nine, or buy a round after the 19th hole. Strictly verboten. And it’s not as if the NBA is run by a bunch of Sergeant Schultzs. If you email, Tweet, or kibitz over a club sandwich, the NBA will find out. You just can’t be seen mixing it up.

Save for Chris Bosh’s(notes) wedding, an event the NBA recently confirmed it would allow special access to for Miami Heat staff. So there’s no excuse, Miami Heat front office and coaching staff (much less Miami Heat players) for staying home during Chris’ wedding. The NBA actually legalized your RSVP. Good news, right?

From the Miami Herald:

While the Heat declined comment Friday, citing league guidelines, the team apparently has already cleared the appearances of management and the coaching staff at the power forward’s nuptials through the NBA.

NBA spokesman Tim Frank initially said Friday, “There are exceptions to the general no-contact rule in special or unusual circumstances.”

Later, Frank clarified. “Don’t have to be so general in this case,” he said in an email. “We’re allowing them to attend.”

Very nice, NBA. Sure, you probably won’t be bothered to talk to the NBA Players Association in formal talks until August, putting the lives and employment status of untold thousands of ancillary workers on hiatus while you divvy up a several billion-dollar pie, but you can be bothered to allow Miami’s coaches and front office to go to Chris Bosh’s wedding. Where I’m sure you’ll tip real, real well.

Just be careful when it comes to the reception. Chris Bosh is into some really lame entertainment.

Related: Chris Bosh, Miami Heat, NBA lockout

Article source: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/The-NBA-is-letting-the-Miami-Heat-attend-Chris-B?urn=nba-wp5961

Facebook Confirms Launch Event; Will It Be ‘Awesome’?

Facebook has scheduled an event for next Wednesday, most likely the “awesome” launch that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg tipped earlier.

“Please join us for an event at Facebook,” the invitation reads, together with an icon that appears to be somewhat of a cross between Facebook Messages and Facebook Groups. The event is scheduled for 10 AM on Wednesday, July 6.

On Thursday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told reporters in the company’s Seattle office that Facebook would “launch something awesome” next week. The project originated from the Seattle office, he said.

Speculation has grown that Facebook’s announcement may be a tablet app, including an iPad app, or a photo-sharing app for the iPhone. A Facebook app for the HP TouchPad debuted Friday. Although designed by HP, not Facebook, PCMag.com ranked it 3.5 stars out of 5.

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“And what a Facebook app it is. Using the TouchPad’s large 9.7-inch display to full effect, this is the most highly interactive version of Facebook we’ve ever seen,” Alex Colon wrote. “It’s still missing some major features like Chat and Groups, and takes some getting used to, but it’ll more than do the trick to scratch your social networking itch.

More importantly, the launch or announcement may be an opportunity to quiz Facebook executives about Google+ and the way Google approached social networking. One of the best things about Google+ – or the dumbest, depending on who you ask – is Circles, Google’s way to separate the user’s social life into different buckets, depending on the user’s preference. Interestingly, Monster.com announced a similar capability this week with BeKnown, which separates one’s career and business contacts from family and friends via a Facebook app.

Mobile Facebook apps and phones have also surfaced in the past few days.

ATT and HTC announced the first Facebook phone for the U.S., the HTC Status, on Wednesday, but social networkers in four other countries have had a Facebook phone for a while: the INQ Cloud Touch, which isn’t coming to the U.S. PCMag.com spent some time with the phone for a hands-on of the INQ Cloud Touch.

For more from Mark, follow him on Twitter @MarkHachman.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387979,00.asp

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