netParticles - Social Media

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed

Richard Tea — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:27:53 +0000

TechCrunch has a preliminary report that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed:

Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now. At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.

This is a very strategic move for Facebook since it will complement their current set of features and take a step towards the "real-time web". Facebook just issued the following press release:

TweetLater Review: A Twitter Productivity Tool

Richard Tea — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:00:00 +0000

TweetLater (TweetLater.com) sounds like any other Twitter automated or scheduled tweeting web applications but do not let the name fool you. It could be considered as one of the most valuable tool for any Twitter Power User. We could even go as far as to say it is an essential Twitter timesaver.

This review is on TweetLater's free version, we will blog about the professional version in other posts not to divert from the main objective.

Making Twitter Marketing Easier

Social Network Marketing requires a much higher investment in time than other marketing initiatives. The cost of the tools and ads are minimal compared to online advertising campaigns but building the relationships on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed could go up as to require a dedicated resource for monitoring and responding.

Twitter's Strategy Leaked, Could They Crowdsource their Strategy 2.0?

Richard Tea — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:53:35 +0000

On Tuesday evening, TechCrunch received over 300 confidential Twitter documents and screenshots. Today they claim they have come to an agreement with Twitter to publish their internal strategy. I will not rehash the Twitter Internal Strategy here and I have already tweeted about this the moment it happened. From the Twitter's blog, they are now really more open than they (ever) wanted to.

Google Reader Social Update, A Step Towards Google Wave?

Richard Tea — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:24:02 +0000

Over the last year, Google has been receiving increased pressure to become a real-time search engine, something like Technorati and Twitter. They certainly have the lead in public content search (and advertising) over the Internet but a threatening amount of private and user information have started to surface behind the great wall of Facebook. Research publications strongly people often rely on word of mouth or recommendations from other people to make their decisions. Although, Google's core strength is search (and lots of math), there is a lot of progress to be done on the social front.

A few hours ago and as reported by TechCrunch and Mashable, Google Reader received a significant upgrade which allowed following, liking and people searching. You are not the only one to automatically see the link to Twitter and Facebook. However, they seem to have set the default sharing method to public while offering the option of sharing only between friends. In the past they have enabled a feature that allowed sharing but was unfortunately set to share by default to selected groups which may not have granted the best success.

A few points of criticism can already be made:

New Social Media Study: Majority Cannot Live Without Social Networks

Richard Tea — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Could you survive without your social networks? (Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? MySpace!?)

Tom H. C. Anderson, managing partner at Anderson Analytics, shared the result of their May survey of 5,000 U.S. social media users which attempts to answer this (the answer is: mainly no). Without reposting the entire article, here is a summarized outline:

Percentage of respondents could probably do without:
- Facebook (29%)
- MySpace (35%)
- Twitter (43%)
On the most valuable network (the report is not clear on how it was calculated since the sum is over 100%)
- Facebook (75%)
- MySpace (65%)
- LinkedIn (30%)
- Twitter (12%)
Usage and reliance on social networks
- Under 35, for "fun" and contacting friends
- Older, indispensable for staying in touch with family and close friends