Google+ Outpaces Facebook, Twitter

Google’s new social network, Google+, attracted over 25 million users in less than a month, according to research firm ComScore, outpacing Facebook and Twitter to become the fastest-growing website to reach the milestone.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which launched Google+ in late June, had 6.5 million visitors from the U.S., its largest market, followed by India with 3.6 million. For comparison, Facebook took around three years to reach 25 million visitors, while MySpace needed about two years and Twitter 30 months.

The data shows Google+ is growing, but the results don’t necessarily predict its long-term success. For example, MySpace, once a social network juggernaut, hemorrhaged much of its users this past year alone, ComScore said.

The long-term success of social networks matters little with the volume of visitors, but rather, the depth of interaction between them. Users with more active friends on a site are more likely to keep using it.

Still, the first hurdle is getting people to start using it, which Google+ has proven it can achieve. But the strength of the social bonds between its users needs to be grown slowly, as each successive wave of looser-integrated friends are added to the network.

That is, in part, the reason Facebook has such a strong “stickiness” factor. Started at Harvard, it grew to just the Ivy League schools, before universities and then the public.

Google+ implemented features that may help distinguish it from other social networks and encourage users to spend time on the site with friends. Its “Hangouts” feature, which allows group video chat, has piqued interest. The service is also set to roll out an API to allow developers to make games for Google+, in a move to replicate the success of games like “Farmville” on Facebook.

The incorporation of more interactivity, whether through communication or gaming, will serve to create a destination that users return to repeatedly.

The problem facing Google+ now is whether opening it to such a wide audience will keep visitors going long after the initial buzz has died down. When it does, the quality of the interaction will determine whether it becomes the next Facebook or MySpace.

This post originally appeared at Mobiledia.

Article source: http://blogs.forbes.com/mobiledia/2011/08/03/google-outpaces-facebook-twitter/

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Criticized then crashed: Wild 18 hours for Brad Keselowski

• 
• 
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The former Sprint Cup driver known as “Mr. Excitement” stirred up some drama Tuesday night with a microphone instead of a steering wheel.

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  By Andrew Weber, US Presswire

  Brad Keselowski fired back on Twitter after Jimmy Spencer’s on-air criticism.

By Andrew Weber, US Presswire

Brad Keselowski fired back on Twitter after Jimmy Spencer’s on-air criticism.

On Speed’s Race Hub, analyst Jimmy Spencer, who drove in NASCAR’s premier series from 1989 to 2006, took exception to Brad Keselowski‘s postrace Brickyard 400 comments Sunday. After finishing ninth, Keselowski said, “I felt like Jeff (Gordon) and I were the two best cars” and said strategy had taken his No. 2 Dodge out of contention for a victory.

Gordon finished second in the race, won by Paul Menard.

• STANDINGS: Keselowski 21st in points

Spencer didn’t appreciate the sentiment of Penske Racing driver Keselowski, who won on fuel mileage at Kansas Speedway in June and is ranked 21st in points with five top-10 finishes.

“Every week, he has the best car, but he rarely competes for wins,” Spencer said. “I think he’s trying to sell his superhuman abilities to the fans and the sponsors. Pipe down.

“If you’ve always got the best cars, why aren’t you winning all the time? Come on. Count this … one, two, three career top-fives. Talladega ’09 (and won), you stayed out at Darlington this year (and finished third) and you won on fuel mileage at Kansas (in June). Please.”

Spencer then got animated with his hands and voice, saying, “Less of this (using a ‘running-the-mouth’ motion) and more of this (motioning as if turning a steering wheel).”

Keselowski responded to Spencer’s comments on Twitter, citing NASCAR’s Loop Data statistics that ranked his car as turning the third-fastest lap of the race Sunday.

Keselowski posted: “Pulled up the stats from Indy. The #2 car was ranked 11, 17, 11 2nd in quarterly rankings based on speed. Stats don’t lie Jimmy Spencer! … Seriously though, Jimmy S. is still mad at me from truck race in memphis 2005. He blocked me twice, so I turned him.”

Asked by a Twitter follower if he had said something to make Spencer mad, Keselowski responded: “yes Lots of breathing.”

Keselowski crashes in Atlanta: While testing at Road Atlanta, a road course, Keselowski was involved in what he and fellow driver Jimmie Johnson described on Twitter as a serious accident.

Keselowski tweeted: “In a serious accident today while testing road Atlanta. Hit wall head on in a 155mph corner after brakes failed. Airlifted to hospital.”

In a tweet a few minutes later, Keselowski said he should be fine to race in Sunday’s Good Sam RV Insurance 500 at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa.: “Looks like I’ll be ok to race this weekend. Blue deuce, not so much. I’ll keep u posted.”

From his hospital bed, he offered even more detail: “Looking at data with engineers in hospital bed. Was going 155, car slowed to approx 100 before hitting a non safer barrier wall head on.”

(Keselowski also tweeted photos of his injuries, one showing cuts and one showing swelling.)

On his Twitter account, Johnson said of Keselowski: “He is one tough dude, I can say that much.”

Johnson posted Twitter photos of the crash scene, including Keselowski’s wrecked car, a trail of tire marks and the damaged wall.

Keselowski was practicing for next weekend’s road-course race at Watkins Glen International. Penske Racing issued a statement that said Keselowski’s trip to the hospital was “precautionary.”

Posted | Updated

Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/motor/nascar/2011-08-03-keselowski-spencer-spat_n.htm

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Afternoon Fix: Gingrich explains Twitter followers

Newt Gingrich’s campaign explains his Twitter followers, Emanuel Cleaver explains what’s in a real Satan sandwich, and Rick Santorum is offering free jelly.

 Make sure to sign up to get “Afternoon Fix” in your e-mail inbox every day by 5 (ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Romney, Huntsman and the uncertainty of debt-limit politics

Sarah Palin’s disappearing act

Bob McDonnell set to step into national spotlight (again)

The Fix’s best state-based political blogs (extended edition)

Liberals hate the debt deal. So what?

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* Newt Gingrich’s campaign has responded to a report in Gawker alleging that the candidate paid for Twitter followers. “At no time has the campaign or Gingrich Communications employed an outside group to inflate the number of followers of @newtgingrich,” said R.C. Hammond, a spokesman for the former House Speaker in a statement. “Any accusation of the kind is a lie, a smear and unsubstantiated.” The campaign points out that Gingrich was on Twitter’s Suggested User List, which helps explain his huge follower count.

* Bad blood? One of the recent donors to Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s campaign is a former campaign manager for Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) — who is hoping to unseat the senator in 2012. Jason van Eaton, who now runs a consulting firm, gave $1,000 to the Democrat. Warren Erdmanand Matt Roney, two one-time staffers to former Republican senator Kit Bond, are also McCaskill donors.

* Recipes have been floating around, but Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) gave his own “Satan sandwich” ingredients on MSNBC today: “You’ve got a little bit of sourdough on one side of the sandwich for poor people. And then you have some onions for people who are on unemployment benefits and realize that’s not going to be in the deal. It’s got a lot of stuff in it . . . very few things that are good.”

* In an interview with the Wall Street Journal‘s Opinion Journal today, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) suggested Republicans were still committed to entitlement reform along the lines of the plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Younger Americans, he said, will have to “come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many.” People over 55 will still be protected; “the rest of us have got ample time to try and plan our lives so that we can adjust to reality.”

WHAT YOU SHOULDN’T MISS:

* Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) is really going to resign, really. He promises. Officials are still waiting for the scandal-ridden lawmaker to actually submit his resignation paperwork; Wu’s spokesman says that it “won’t be long.” Meanwhile, Rob Cornilles — Wu’s 2010 challenger — is running for the seat again.

* Tim Pawlenty will be back in Iowa on Friday for the launch of an eight-day tour ending with the Ames straw poll on Aug. 13th. He will hit 26 cities in 21 counties, covering 1,366 miles. The former Minnesota governor has gone all-out in hopes of a good Ames showing.

* One straw poll trick Pawlenty isn’t trying: homemade jelly. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum
will be handing out samples of peach preserves, made fresh by his family from their backyard orchard, at his straw poll tent. Seriously, can anyone top that?

* Not only is the straw poll next Saturday, on Thursday there’s an Iowa debate. Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Chris Wallace will be joined by Washington Examiner correspondents Byron York and Susan Ferrechio to moderate. Gingrich, Pawlenty, Santorum, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, and Jon Huntsman are all participating.

THE FIX MIX:

There are some important life lessons here.

With Rachel Weiner and Aaron Blake

Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/afternoon-fix-gingrich-explains-twitter-followers/2011/08/03/gIQA7vQbsI_blog.html

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Facebook Privacy Practices Under Fire In Germany

Germany’s not the place to mess around with internet privacy issues. And the latest to come under fire is Facebook for its facial recognition feature that helps users to quickly identify and tag friends in photos. A German privacy official today has accused Facebook of using the facial recognition technology in a way that is in violation of German and European privacy laws.

Facebook’s implementation of face recognition technology has already been under investigation by a conglomerate of data protection experts and officials from various EU nations. But today, Johannes Caspar, a data protection expert from the city of Hamburg has called on the social network to stop the feature for German users and to delete the individual biometric data that’s been collected.

Caspar warned that the German authorities would take action if Facebook does not comply. His main concerns are that the data collected could be abused if fallen into the wrong hands. Specifically, he feared that such a system could be used in an undemocratic government to spy on the opposition.

“If the data were to get into the wrong hands, then someone with a picture taken on a mobile phone could use biometrics to compare the pictures and make an identification,” said Caspar. “The right to anonymity is in danger.”

It will be interesting to see how this develops, since here in the states, facial recognition add-ons for iPhones have just been approved for police departments nationwide to be deployed in September.

[via Guardian]

Article source: http://www.slashgear.com/facebook-privacy-practices-under-fire-in-germany-03169402/

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Will Google+ Catch Facebook? Developers Say Yes

Despite my documented skepticism, it is impossible to deny that Google+ is gripping the world of social media. Still in a testing phase, the new social network has already attracted 25 million users – users that are very excited about the possibilities and very impressed by Google’s innovation.

Although some don’t see why the two must always be compared, the general wisdom is that Google+ is battling an uphill war against Facebook and its entrenched group of familiar users (all 750 million of them). Can Google+ ever pass Facebook when it comes to social? Mobile app developers think that it can and many think that it will.

Appcelerator just released their quarterly “mobile developer report” and in it they ask the developers about the battle between Facebook and Google+.

Two-thirds of those surveyed believe that Google+ can catch Facebook. Why do they believe that? 68% of them said that Google’s access to all of Google’s properties is what makes them a contender. Search, YouTube, Maps – all of these things are what Google can leverage in order to compete with Facebook in social, say the developers.

49% said that Google’s innovations with Google+ can set it apart. They mentioned Hangouts and Circles as examples of the innovation that they liked.

25% said that Google+ will have the most impact on mobile growth and adoption. And 73% of them said that they plan on using Google+ in their apps this year. This is even with the Google+ API still unreleased. That 73% is only barely behind the 83% that plan on using Facebook in their apps.

How fast is Google+ growing? According to data from last week, total visits to the site declined by 3% two weeks ago and average time spent on the site declined 10%. This doesn’t sound like great news. But when you look at this graph (courtesy of Search Engine Land), it puts a small, one-week traffic drop in perspective -

Google+ is the fastest growing social network by far.

And as of right now, we know the population of the Google+ early adopters. For the most part, in the most simplistic terms, Google+ users are Young, Single, American Men of Technology. When the masses begin to flood to Google+ there is no telling how fast they will reach milestones. 100 million users could be right around the corner.

Article source: http://www.webpronews.com/will-google-catch-facebook-developers-say-yes-2011-08

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Randi Zuckerberg Leaves Facebook, Starts Own Company

Facebook Director of Marketing Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of founder Mark Zuckerberg, has decided to leave Facebook to start her own company.

Zuckerberg’s new company, RtoZ Media, will focus on helping companies become more social. “My goal is to launch my own innovative programming and work with media companies to develop their programming in new, and more social ways,” Zuckerberg said in her resignation letter.

The former Facebook marketing director will draw from her experiences developing the company’s marketing strategy and its popular live video channel, Facebook Live. She was recently nominated for an Emmy for her work with Facebook Live. (Mashable recently teamed up with Facebook Live for its SXSW coverage.)

In a phone call with Mashable, Zuckerberg said that she thinks of the move as a “natural extension” and had been considering the move “for a really long time.” With the success of Facebook Live and the Facebook-Obama town hall, she saw an opportunity to start her own company.

“I had the momentum to do it now,” she said.

The news, first reported by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, will come as a shock to the Silicon Valley establishment. Randi Zuckerberg has been a pivotal figure in Facebook’s growth, and her departure will create a void that not even her brother will be able to fill.

Article source: http://mashable.com/2011/08/03/randi-zuckerberg-leaves-facebook-starts-own-company/

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Chirpy Twitter Coins $400M Boost

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Article source: http://smarthouse.com.au/Content_And_Downloads/Applications/E8U2G6E2

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Google+ Outpaces Facebook, Twitter

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which launched Google+ in late June, had 6.5 million visitors from the U.S., its largest market, followed by India with 3.6 million. For comparison, Facebook took around three years to reach 25 million visitors, while MySpace needed about two years and Twitter 30 months.

The data shows Google+ is growing, but the results don’t necessarily predict its long-term success. For example, MySpace, once a social network juggernaut, hemorrhaged much of its users this past year alone, ComScore said.

The long-term success of social networks matters little with the volume of visitors, but rather, the depth of interaction between them. Users with more active friends on a site are more likely to keep using it.

Still, the first hurdle is getting people to start using it, which Google+ has proven it can achieve. But the strength of the social bonds between its users needs to be grown slowly, as each successive wave of looser-integrated friends are added to the network.

That is, in part, the reason Facebook has such a strong “stickiness” factor. Started at Harvard, it grew to just the Ivy League schools, before universities and then the public.

Google+ implemented features that may help distinguish it from other social networks and encourage users to spend time on the site with friends. Its “Hangouts” feature, which allows group video chat, has piqued interest. The service is also set to roll out an API to allow developers to make games for Google+, in a move to replicate the success of games like “Farmville” on Facebook.

The incorporation of more interactivity, whether through communication or gaming, will serve to create a destination that users return to repeatedly.

The problem facing Google+ now is whether opening it to such a wide audience will keep visitors going long after the initial buzz has died down. When it does, the quality of the interaction will determine whether it becomes the next Facebook or MySpace.

Article source: http://www.mobiledia.com/news/101032.html

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Report: 92% of Newt Gingrich’s Twitter Followers Aren’t Real

I’d rather follow Sarah Palin any day. So how that does it make sense that the ex-governor of Alaska, mother of five and reality show superstar have only 600,000 followers on Twitter compared to Newt Gingrich’s 1.3 million? Short answer: He probably doesn’t.

Enter Twittergate. Internet search engine firm PeekYou told gossip blog Gawker that it had crunched the numbers, and it would appear that 92% of Gingrich’s followers are indeed fake. They culled together some data, trying to separate fake accounts and spambots.

(MORE: How to Tweet Like a Man)

While it’s not perfect, Newt’s numbers are way out of the ordinary – even for a politician. While about 8% of his followers are real, other politicians were deemed to have anywhere 20% to 30% of “real” followers. In comparison, the average Twitter user, like you and me, have anywhere from 35% to 60% real people following them. A former Gingrich staffer has supposedly alleged that he bought his followers.

Michael Hussey, the founder and CEO of PeekYou, said, “We have seen some pretty low ‘Consumer Ratios’ in our testing, but Newt Gingrich’s was the lowest we had ever seen. At first, we actually thought it might have been a bug on our side, but a quick manual look at the data showed our analysis was true.” Turns out Newt probably only actually has about 106,055 real followers. The firm also followed up on the claim that Gingrich bought his fellow Twitizens and succeeded at purchasing a few of them on eBay, showing that it was indeed possible.

PeekYou’s general business manager Josh Mackey definitely had a few things to say about it. “The huge majority of his followers are either completely anonymous people who have no other web presence, or they are spambots… When we saw [the results], we actually had our quality assurance people go over the numbers for two days to doublecheck.”

MORE: The Numbers: How Many Tweets Did Obama Have to Deal With?

(via Gawker and PeekYou)

Erica Ho is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @ericamho and Google+ so she doesn’t have to buy followers. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Article source: http://techland.time.com/2011/08/03/report-92-of-newt-gingrichs-twitter-followers-arent-real/

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Facebook Lets Expectant Parents Share the News with ‘Expected: Child’

Facebook has added a feature that lets expectant parents add unborn children to the “Friends and Family” section of their profiles by selecting “Expected: Child” on the drop-down list. Typical of anything Facebook does, this feature — implemented so that parents-to-be wouldn’t break Facebook’s rules by creating a profile for someone who is very underage — has stirred controversy for the social network.

Some believe that posting Expected: Child on Facebook cheapens the experience of becoming a parent. TechNewsDaily spoke to an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan who said that it’s a “very clinical way” to share information — as if overzealous upcoming parents wouldn’t tweet-blast friends and followers the same data, just without the formality of an added profile.

More controversial is the inherent dangers of telling large groups of people — some of whom you may not even know — that you’re pregnant and then having something tragic happen. That, of course, is a risk some people choose to take when they share anything on any social network, so it shouldn’t raise as much of a stink as it has.

What I find most odd about Facebook’s Expected: Child feature is the grammar. Why the semicolon? The usage of a semicolon in that context usually means you get another blank spot to fill in more information, like “Expected: Hangover” or “Expected: Cat named Professor Wiggles.” If Facebook goes full-throttle and allows users to customize their profiles in that fashion — like they added civil unions and domestic partnerships to their relationship statuses — maybe it will truly be a better place to meet friends and self-express.

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Article source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/237161/facebook_lets_expectant_parents_share_the_news_with_expected_child.html

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