This Week in Social

Facebook wants your expected child, Google+ should be fatest growing social network, Old Twitter is dead, Germany wants Facebook's facial recognition features halted, Sports stars using social media and Foursquare self service pages

Facebook gives option to add expected child as family member

 

Facebook members have been able to add other members of their family to their profile for some time but the new option allows the addition of an unborn child. This feature gives parents the option to add a due date and even name the child. Apparently too many parents were creating “illegal” fake profiles for their yet unhatched offspring and setting their age to 13, with this being the legal age to use Facebook.

You can read the story from TechCrunch.

 

Google+ now has 25 millions active users

In just one month, Google+ has captured 25 million visitors, making it the fastest social network to reach such a number. Growing at around 1 million users per day Google+ has outshined Facebook, which took three years to grab 25 million people, and Twitter, which took a little more than 30 months to reach that level.

You can read more on Google+'s rate of growth at Mashable. 

 

The Old Twitter is dead

Back in June, Twitter announced that they would be decommissioning the old platform from 3rd of August. While the new version has been out since last September, users still had permission to use the old version if they chose to, until now. May you RIP Old Twitter.

More about this story can be read at Media Bistro.

 

Germany claims Facebook are breaking EU privacy laws

A German privacy expert has claimed that Facebook's facial recognition software is violating German and European Union laws. Facebook uses individual biometric data that allows users to locate new friends after discovering their identity. The feature 'recognises' faces in photos so that you can connect a face in a photo, shortening the tedious tagging process.

All Facebook continues with a good article about this topic.

 

Sports stars in need of social media training

Joey Barton's public bust-up at Newcastle has resulted in the midfielder being transfer-listed for free. It has highlighted the impact social media can have on a professional athlete's career. After questioning his own club's transfer policy on his personal Twitter page, Newcastle United have issued him with a two week fine. The current Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew, admits he risks being seen as a dictator by his disgruntled players after firing a warning shot at his Twitter-mad squad - a legal letter designed to stamp-out the kind of cyber-ranting that has left Barton's future on Tyneside hanging by a thread.

 

Foursquare pages are now self service

Foursquares business pages are now self service, meaning that brands can now independently update their profile pages on the located based service.The updates make it easier for brands to publish information for consumers such as discount promotions and photos, via their Foursquare pages. For more information please visit Foursquare blog.

 

The Man Without a Face

Below contains a mini film that is play on The Man Without a Face that was created by writers and directors Dan De Lorenzo and Ben Stumpf, promotes the merits of being “untaggable,” which seem to include writing with pens, coming up with words sans Google and understanding why men and women like each other.

Have you still been using the Old Twitter? Would you update your Facebook family with an unborn child? Should sports stars be told not to use social media for their outbursts? Do you feel that your privacy is at risk with Facebook facial recognition? Please leave your comments in the section below...

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This Week In Social:

Facebook App for iPad revealed, The White House brings back the Rick-Roll, Google+ traffic falls, Sergio Aguero tweets his arrival to Manchester City and Twitter will add flagging option to links

 

iPad Facebook app found hidden inside iPhone app

TechCrunch didn't waste any time getting hold of the Facebook iPad app that was hidden in the iPhone app update, they even took a dozen pics and showed off the app that Apple fans have been craving. The app makes the Facebook experience far richer and more in-depth, such as giving happy snappers out there access to direct uploads to their iPad.

You can read the story from TechCrunch here.

 

The White House tweets out a Rick-Roll

You may remember the craze of RickRolling that even YouTube got involved with on April Fools 2008, it was where your friend sent you a link and instead of seeing a trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV you got Rick Astley's greatest hit Never Gonna Give You Up. 

The official White House Twitter account posted this response to David Wiggs regarding fiscal policy, "@wiggsd Sorry to hear that. Fiscal policy is important, but can be dry sometimes. Here’s something more fun tinyurl.com/y8ufsnp". 

This garnered a lot of attention by the mainstream press such as the BBC but most importantly got positive retweets and mentions from Twitter.

 

Google+ traffic sees first fall

It has been reported by Mashable that the latest social media craze Google+ has seen a dip of 3% in traffic. Not only that, users average time on the site has also fallen by 10%. This is the first time that Google's latest social product has seen a stumble in terms of growth. Last week in social showed that Google+ had reached 20 million users and was first to reach 10 million out of the major social media platforms.

 

Sergio Aguero tweets before official announcement from Manchester City

Twitter is often first for breaking news but in this case, Argentinian superstar footballer Sergio Aguero broke the news that he was signing for Manchester City before any official announcement. The player had a arrived for a medical but Manchester City had said that talks were still ongoing. This tweet from Sergio Aguero was retweeted by many fans and was used by news outlets to announce his signing.

You can read more about the transfer here on MCFC.

 

Twitter gives option to flag tweeted links

After seeing an unfortunate but predictable rise in spam links that are not safe for work on Twitter, there has been an option added to flag links so that other people will get a warning before they click it. This will help to reduce the power of spreading viral links that try to scam individuals or just aren't suitable for certain audiences. 

You can read more on Gizmodo.

 

After such a good week for Google+, has it fallen victim to the novelty-factor? What do you think about the option to flag tweets? We think it is an excellent feature because it will help to stop those @ mentions from suspicious accounts we all see from time to time. Will you be counting down the days until the official Facebook iPad app gets approved in the App Store? Please leave your comments in the section below...

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What is Google+?

So you may have seen a lot of fuss being made about Google's new stab at social networking in the form of 'Google+', which was announced last night.

Following on from the-not-so-succesful 'Buzz' and 'Wave', Google it would seem has a lot of making up to do in the social space. That's an understatement considering the popularity of Facebook; can Google+ ever lay a finger on Zuckerberg's empire? 

We've pulled together some of the chat going on and some helpful vids to give you the lowdown.

What is Google+?

 

What is being said? 

Wired says:

The parts announced Tuesday represent only a portion of Google’s plans. In an approach the company refers to as “rolling thunder,” Google has been quietly been pushing out pieces of its ambitious social strategy — there are well over 100 launches on its calendar. When some launches were greeted by yawns, the Emerald Sea team leaders weren’t ruffled at all — lack of drama is part of the plan. Google has consciously refrained from contextualizing those products into its overall strategy.

That will begin now, with the announcement of the two centerpieces of Google+. But even this moment — revealed in a blog post that marks the first limited “field tests” outside the company — will be muted, because it marks just one more milestone in a long, tough slog to remake Google into something more “people-centric.”

GigaOM says:

One of the reasons why I think Facebook is safe is because it cannot be beaten with this unified strategy. Theoretically speaking, the only way to beat Facebook is through a thousand cuts. Photo sharing services such as Instagram can move attention away from Facebook, much like other tiny companies who can bootstrap themselves based on Facebook social graph and then built alternative graphs to siphon away attention from Facebook. Google, could in theory go one step further – team up with alternative social graphs such as Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr and use those graphs to create an uber graph.

TechCrunch says:

Overall, I’m impressed by Google+ after day one. Of course, like many, I also had fairly low expectations of anything Google tried to do in the social sphere after Wave and Buzz. Still, I used Google+ for hours and kept coming back. And I have a desire to come back tomorrow. That’s never a bad thing.

Google has done a very good job with the early execution. Can they maintain that? Once the novelty is gone, will there be a reason to use it? And will the idea scale — meaning both in absolute size and in terms of moving beyond an early adopter market? Remember, as great as FriendFeed was, it never really went beyond the early adopters.

Of course, you could also make the case (as I once presciently did) that a lot of what FriendFeed was is now being used by hundreds of millions of people around the world inside of Facebook. Google, given its size, will have a similar opportunity to take their concepts to the masses. It didn’t work with Buzz, will it with Google+?

Let’s revisit the question in about a month.

 

Would you make the switch from Facebook to Google+?

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This Week In Social:

Facebook Secret Project's Unveiled, Google Monitoring, LinkedIn Has Klout, Facebook's Washington Insider, and Tumblr > WordPress

 

Facebook's Secret Photo Sharing App 

See the full gallery on Posterous

TechCrunch have revealed something massive - documents and images outlining what appears to be a new Facebook iPhone app built around photo sharing. With apps like Instagram and Colour exploding onto the mobile scene, it is clear that Facebook is keen to focus on mobile photos going forward.

 

Project Spartan

TechCrunch have also unveiled another Facebook secret project codenamed Project Spartan. They believe it is the codename for a new platform Facebook is on the verge of launching. It's entirely HTML5-based and the aim is to reach some 100 million users in a key place: mobile. More specifically, the initial target is mobile Safari.

 

Me, Myself & I

Google have released a new tool to help make it easier to monitor your identity on the web and to provide easy access to resources describing ways to control what information is on the web. This tool, Me on the Web, appears as a section of the Google Dashboard right beneath the Account details.

 

Measure Your LinkedIn Klout

Klout have this week launched a scoring system for LinkedIn. Once you add LinkedIn to Klout, you'll notice a LinkedIn logo will appear on your profile and your influence on the network will be added to your score. The system measures in a very similar way to its existing Twitter and Facebook metrics.

 

Facebook Hire Former Clinton Press Secretary

The Telegraph reports that Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary for President Bill Clinton, is joining Facebook to oversee the company's international and corporate communications efforts. Mr Lockhart is set to join Facebook next month as Vice President of Global Communications, and represents the company's latest move to enlist Washington insiders.

 

Tumblr > WordPress

See the full gallery on Posterous

According to their respective websites, 4-year-old microblogging platform Tumblr now hosts more blogs than 8-year-old WordPress.com. In January, Tumblr had more than 7 million individual blogs. Whilst there's still not much in it, what is clear is that Tumblr is on the up.

You can read more on Mashable.

 

Lots of exciting developments surrounding Facebook this week. What do you make of their plans? Will you be using Google to monitor your identity? Or are you more interested in your Klout? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below... 

 

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