Google+ (Plus) may already hit 10 million registered users and is expected to hit 20 million users by this weekend. But it’s still a long way off from Facebook’s 750 million registered users.
If Google were just counting on its estimated Gmail subscriber base, it won’t catch up with Facebook at all. But perhaps the bigger source of sign-ups will come from people who use Google search where people all over the world key in more than one billion searches a week.
Online business owners are to face a dilemma. In an announcement on Google+ team member Christian Oestlien announced that they will actively shut down business profiles.
Business profiles have been becoming more and more present on Google+, but were outlawed from Day 1 according to the ToS: read more
Word is going around that “Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg registered a Google+ account” without any confirmation from the Facebook founder.
An article in International Business Times in San Francisco says:
As of Saturday evening, he had 22 people in his Circle and 2994 people added him on their Circles.
According to a tweet from allegedly from Robert Scoble: ”…Zuckerberg just texted me back. Says “Why are people so surprised that I’d have a Google account?”
Verifying any truth from the tweet seems problematic. read more
Myspace. Does it really have a heart after firing more employees?
From 1,400 employees two years ago, the number of employees at Myspace now number just around 200. This development follows after News Corp. sold the social networking site to Specific Media and after Justin Timberlake, who portrayed Sean Parker in the movie “Social Network”, joined the company.
Myspace, was sold for $580 million to Rupert Murdoch. The plan back then, according to Business Insider was to “merge MySpace into Yahoo and save Yahoo from Microsoft’s clutches…as long as Yahoo agreed to value MySpace at something like $10 billion.” Myspace was recently sold for just $30 million.
Tim Vanderhook, Specific Media CEO, is practically singing the same song. According to an article in CNET plans to use Myspace to build a “digital media company on par with Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, and all the other big names out there.”
The first wave of Google + (www.plus.google.com) invites will be going out soon and in the next few hours, we’ll probably see more posts with loaded with praises or criticisms. The first few weeks of reviews won’t probably do much to prove or disprove the idea that the search giant’s social initiative will actually eat up Facebook as it inches towards its rumored 2012 IPO.
Ensogo. Great for bargain hunters, but how about merchants?
I’ve been receiving pretty good offers from Ensogo over the past few weeks now and I am surprised by the amazingly low prices they have. Almost every single thing is marked down or discounted by at least 50 percent and the quality of the stuff they are offering seems pretty good.
Ensogo, like Groupon, is a social buying site and was recently acquired by LivingSocial, one of the major Groupon competitors.
In their e-mail to me today, two things interested me immediately: an offer for a Php600 (about US $ 15.00) Berting’s Grill gift certificate discounted at P300 (about US $ 7.50) and a 3-day, 2-night stay at the Boracay Terraces Hotel going for P7,700 (about US $180) when it would normally cost twice that much.
And, having just opened up a bank account that links up with PayPal (but you can also pay via ATM Peso Pay or bank transfer), I might just buy that gift certificate from Berting’s Grill and use it to buy several orders of their fabulous barbecued chicken ass and liempo or pork ribs. As for Boracay Terraces Hotel, well, it’s something that I really got to discuss with my wife first — but it looks like a pretty good buy.
All in all, it’s almost a revolutionary site for bargain hunters like me but it may not be all that amazing for merchants who get into social buying sites expecting “magic” to happen. A long time acquaintance who sells organic food online clued me in on a couple of caveats and cited a couple of reasons why he isn’t a fan of Ensogo — at least, not yet. read more
Will you buy something that was recommended to you on Twitter?
The thing is, I wouldn’t even buy something that one of my best friends recommends to me. But maybe I am not the sort of person who would be susceptible to any of my friend’s recommendations or perhaps it’s because my best friend always ends his recommendations with a disclaimer — “check it out for yourself man, don’t take my word for it.”
Maybe I am actually confessing to be a caveman when it comes to buying on the sole basis of a recommendation I come across online. Or maybe I don’t really fully understand how “online conversation” can lead to an actual sale.
The patently dishonest hype, if you will, surrounding the social media marketing buzz around the world is that the repeated and frequent mention of your brand on Twitter and Facebook can ultimately lead to rip-roaring, laugh-like-a-maniac-wall-the-way-to-the-bank sale.
It won’t. Not immediately, magically, or miraculously. Especially NOT just because it’s on Twitter or Facebook or a blog.
Facebook has actually made social connections more entertaining, rendering even some of my most boring relatives, friends, co-workers, and casual acquaintances a bit more interesting.
Now that Netflix chairman and CEO Reed Hastings has joined Facebook’s board, I’m wondering what’s going to be down the road of my life on Facebook. Will I one day look up from my laptop and ask my wife to watch a movie or TV show on Facebook?
Clearly, as Facebook inches towards reaching 1 billion users sometime next year, it is looking for more and more ways to keep people logged in. Games are obvious time consumers and so is music. Movies and TV? Definitely. (Even if it means watching Green Lantern laying a big fat egg at the tills.)
As an additional revenue stream (which Facebook probably needs more than just traffic), perhaps it’ll lead to seamless social network TV/movie promotion that actually brings bigger bucks. That will definitely come in handy, if and when, Facebook goes public next year and needs to support its profitability profile.
Last year a young and pretty female former co-worker at the Office of Senator Richard Gordon got in touch with me through Facebook chat. Although I initially savored the idea that the conversation was going to be somewhat purely social, talk eventually turned to one particular facet of everyone’s life online: Will prospective employers Google her and use the information they find to decide on whether or not to hire her?
Being somewhat the office’s second default expert on all things online, I said “Yes. Of course.”
If someone else had asked me the same question before Facebook became one of the biggest social networking sites on the planet, my answer would have been “No. Not unless you’ve been involved in a crime or scandal that was published on an online newspaper, blog or forum.” The reason for this is that online newspapers, blogs, and forums used to be the most likely ones to turn up a person’s name. Moreover, the more common reason for a person’s name to turn up on Google search would be either because they’ve been very good or very, very bad.
These days, anyone who has ever Googled themselves will know that their Facebook profile (along with LinkedIn, Twitter, Google profile, etcetera) will invariably turn up in the first ten search results. This can be both a boon and a bane, most especially now after a company got the nod of the US Federal Trade Commission to screen job applicants based on their Facebook and Twitter postings. read more
With more than 26 million users, the Philippines is the 7th largest country in terms of Facebook users according to Social Bakers.
While most people here use it to keep in touch with friends and family or play games, Facebook has become more than a diversion for at least one long time friend.
Armand Nocum, an acclaimed Filipino journalist who is now a legal public relations consultant, is making waves on Facebook that will hopefully help bring peace to his home island Mindanao.
Armand is the founder of the Kristiyano-Islam Peace Library (Kris), a non-government literacy advocacy group, that recently built at least one library in Zambonga City and another in Quezon City. Apart from libraries, the advocacy group also funded scholarships, donated books, and organized medical missions.
