Social Networking Juggernaut Strikes Again

Juggernaut                                Facebook

Facebook claims they have more than 500 million active users. There are now 2 billion people that use the internet. So this means that 25% of all internet users are on Facebook according to the International Telecommunications Union. Facebook seems to have a death grip on the social networking scene and even the internet as a whole. This digital monopoly is basically caused by everyone being on the social network and everyone wants to be networked with each other so they’re on Facebook. But even so, the lifespan of a social network can be tricky to determine. More than a few social networking sites have seen their prime come and go with the social networking juggernaut that is Facebook.

Dead MySpace

MySpace is one of those dying social networks that at one point had more members using it than Facebook. It was even sold to News Corp. in 2005 for $580 million. After losing traffic from sites like Facebook and Twitter, MySpace switched gears and tried to find a niche with their bands and filmmaker members. According to Mashable.com MySpace is now up for sale and yet the bidding is likely not to reach $100 million.

Many social networking sites that pop up today or even ones that have been around but lost users because of Facebook are turning their attention towards a specific niche. Another example of a Facebook defeated SNS is Friendster. Friendster was one of the first SNS around, forming in 2002. It was announced yesterday that they will be deleting all user data on May 31. On a Friendster help forum for exporting friends they say:

2. What will happen to the current version of Friendster and my Friendster account?

We are introducing a new and improved Friendster in the coming weeks that will be focused on entertainment and fun. There will be new features that will leverage on your online activities and will enable you to connect with friends or engage new friends with similar interests.

So with everyone joining Facebook and leaving the other sites in the dust is there any way a smaller social network can fight back? I say yes, there are things wrong with Facebook. One thing I find annoying about Facebook are the businesses and people that are trying to get you to their website to make money. It’s also not the best site for everything it just has the most people networked into it. Sites that have seen an increase in users recently have found niches in the SNS sphere. For example, Tumblr is a blogging site that has seen membership rise. LinkedIn takes a professional approach to social networking. Also growing is the website StumbleUpon, a site that chooses a random website based on one’s interests sort of like Pandora does with music. Ignite Social Media posted a very interesting infographic about declining and blossoming social network sites.

All of these “niche-type” SNS are competing against Facebook (and each other) for a piece of the new media pie. There are many alternative sites that Facebook has to deal with to remain as the sole, dominant social network site. But Facebook has had a head start and is already monopolizing the market. Some people may not like the idea of a monopoly in any market, but I believe this market (at least in the U.S.) is suited for this type of dominant website that is kept in check by its users.

 
Tweet of the day:

dfarkins Joe S.

MMM. mmmmm. MEAT GLUE. Enjoy! http://www.dump.com/2011/04/14/meat-glue-secret-video/

No Explanation for Hacking?

Playstation.blog

I was disappointed to turn on my Playstation 3 on Thursday and learn that Playstation Network was not available. As Easter weekend approached, Sony took down their worldwide internet gaming service Playstation Network. Playstation Network provides over 70 million gamers around the world with free online play and downloading of some particular games. There have been some issues with internet hackers (hacktivists) in the past and there are some people viewing this as another hack by a primary group called Anonymous.

At first, Sony only let out a statement on their blog saying that they were “aware certain functions of Playstation Network are down.” But there was speculation that the network had been hacked and this was partially confirmed by Sony in their next blog by saying that an “external intrusion” was to blame for the service being suspended.

pcmag.com

There has been some thoughts as to if the hacker group Anonymous is to blame for these latest hack attacks. This is because of the lawsuit filed by Sony upon Playstation 3 hacker, George Hotz, who is believed to have uncensored some of the PS3’s methods of how it works and running custom packages with the system. After Sony filed the lawsuit, Anonymous sent them a letter threatening them of hacking their websites and they did just that. Sony’s main web sites went down for a full day.

These so called hacktivists (a play on hackers and activists) are supporters of whistle blowing sites such as Wikileaks. They have even gone so far as to introduce a site called Tunisileaks when the country of Tunisia blocked Wikileaks.

Here is where people begin to disagree with the function of this “group”. On one side people will tend to say that, first off, companies should not make enemies with people that can hack their systems. Another side will say that Anonymous isn’t even a group and therefore cannot be recognized and or blamed for these acts. These people think that Anonymous stands for an anarchist idea of internet freedom and free speech. Even so, other people will believe that these hackers are sort of like terrorists in that they think they are always right and can go about with shutting down networks and disabling sites at their own will.

Personally, I agree that hacking groups like Anonymous are good for showing corruption among physical entities. But honestly, I just want Playstation Network back online as soon as possible. Then I’ll be able to play my Call of Duty: Black Ops and watch Cheers and Trailer Park Boys on Netflix again. Heck, I might even Skype with a friend just to get my use out of it in the four days I’ve lost so far.

Here is a video from earlier this month stating that Anonymous did not want to interrupt the PSN but wanted to target Sony, among stating other things.

Tweet of the day:

kevinlove Kevin Love

Happy Easter!

The Corporate Battle for New Media Continues

Mashable

In my last blog post I introduced the current and future battle of mobile computing. The rate at which Facebook and Google come out with new ideas and applications for the virtual community is astonishing. Since my last blog Google has made another move against Facebook. Google’s +1 button is the answer to Facebook’s Like button. It will act as a “public stamp of approval” for any and everything that Google shows you on its site according to Google Labs. And not just that, pretty soon external websites will be able to include a +1 button on their own site that allows viewers to recommend a story, ad, or whatever to everyone else. Here is a video introducing Google’s new move into social media.

And a day after the button was understood by tech junkies; somebody has cracked the code and found a way to put +1 on external websites. Google had said that this wasn’t going to be made public for a while. It just goes to show you how quickly the public expects these new advancements in social media. In a similar fashion, internet users found holes in the New YorkTimes innovative paywall and breached it within the first week of use.

Advertising money is how these two websites generate revenue. Google stepped into the social networking scene with Google Buzz in early 2010 because Facebook was taking away tons of advertisers. To date, Google has had very little success with their making their business more social. The +1 button takes a different approach then Buzz and hopes to take hold of some Facebook users.

The reason we are seeing advertisers turn more to Facebook with the placement of their ads is because new ad platforms see quality over quantity in the form of expression is greater than impression. Facebook allows advertisers to target their audience with the use of keywords and the user’s demographics. Google has been using the impression model of advertising. Where more clicks equals more money. While Google has more unique visitors according to a Nielsen Company study, Facebook users spend 5 times as long on the site.

Marketing Charts

To update the battle going on between Apple and its many competitors, both HP and Dell top executives badmouthed the iPad this week. In an interview with CIO Australia Andy Lark, Dell’s Global Head of Marketing Enterprises alleged:

“[Apple has] done a really nice job, they’ve got a great product, but the challenge they’ve got is that already Android is outpacing them. Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.”

So there you have it. The battle rages on…on the web. The Google v. Facebook, search engine v. social network skirmish seems to be the most interesting as of now. I believe these fights between digital media companies can only mean good things for the public consumer. We get more variety of newer technologies at a rapid pace.

Tweet of the day:

cnnbrk CNN Breaking News

Interior Minister: Ivory Coast's air and sea borders have been closed indefinitely #IvoryCoast http://on.cnn.com/hHoJhY

Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Google vs. Facebook

Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook vs. Microsoft... does that even make sense??? I mean, Apple and Microsoft make computers right? Google is a search engine. And Facebook is a social networking site. So how are they competing? Well those two things may have been what these two COMPANIES were mainly known for but I think that is all about to change.

As of right now the main battle going on between Apple and Google is the mobile computing duopoly they have on smartphones and their operating systems. Apple has done well to stay ahead of the curve and invent new consumer electronics such as the Macbook, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. The iPhone was really the first widely accepted and used smartphone on the scene. But then Google came out with its own operating system for mobile devices called Android OS to compete with iOS for the iPhone. It really is a battle between a closed, limited system (Apple) versus an open, choice based system (Google).

And now enters the heavyweight into the smartphone fight. Microsoft’s Windows Phone has been released and is starting to get play from new phone users that have a history using Microsoft software. Microsoft has long been known as the leader in operating systems with Windows being a steady winner. Back in the late 80’s and 90’s Apple tried to use their own software with their own hardware against IBM and Microsoft and other companies that used a more open form of computing. 

Gizmodo.com

Nowadays it’s a fight for a chunk of the social media and mobile computing market. The Nielsen Company released data on who is winning the U.S. smartphone battle. The following graphic illustrates that it depends if you look by operating system Android holds a slight lead but it shows Apple and Blackberry as companies make their own devices so are they winning?

The Nielsen Company

Enter Mark Zuckerberg and his fresh company, Facebook. Android phones have started to incorporate more seamless apps and experiences with Facebook on their phones but Google and Facebook are competing. So we may not be far off from a Facebook operating system. Either that or a merger of sorts between Apple and Facebook are possibilities. John Dvorak, a writer for Wall Street Journal, writes:

Let’s assume that Facebook does not want to develop a new phone OS from scratch. This leaves open the possibility that Apple Inc.  could do a specially branded iPhone that is Facebook-centric. It could be a blue model, for example, and have the Facebook brand burned into the body. This is not a stretch for Apple, since it has done special versions of the iPod in the past.

This all leads to some very interesting situations in the mobile computing market and beyond. The post-PC era is dawning on us and these four tech giants are competing for the right to change the way we use technology to communicate. Beyond smartphones and tablets the options are limitless for these digital leaders.

Tweet of the day:

Target Target

Yesterday, Fat Tuesday. Today, Up&Up antacid.

(Spring) Break From Social Media

Spring break is only a week away for NDSU students and over 2.1 million other college students across the U.S. This seems like a fitting time to talk about the sometimes much needed escape from many aspects of our lives but also from social networking sites. When you think of spring break you may think of vacationing, partying on the beach, working, or just going home and resting.

Student City

Another thing we should be reminded of doing is detaching ourselves from our computers, smartphones, and in general the virtual world that is social networking. This break is going to be important for me to get away from the stress and hassles of working two jobs, going to school, family and friends, and my social networking life. Just as with sleep in real life we need to take planned break in our online life every once in a while to get energized. I don’t believe there is a certain amount of time. It’s different for everyone.

For example, someone running a small business that relies on social networking sites as a big part of its business should not take more than a week off. But a busy parent of 4 young children that works in a non-social networking related workspace might be able to take a few weeks off at a time. And for me personally, I think taking days around holidays off and also this spring break week off is a good idea as it will help recharge my mental and physical batteries while having a good time.

The reasoning behind needing to recharge ones batteries from social networking is that it is not a passive medium like traditional television. Social media is an interactive conversation between either two people at the least but capable of up to millions and millions of people. People are constantly able to think about not only their own (sometimes extremely mundane) thoughts, but everyone else’s also.

Another reason we need to take a step back from social networking sites is because a lot of us have become addicted. A news article from WHEC-TV in Rochester, NY says there are new studies that liken Facebook to a gambling addiction. It also states that the more friends you have on Facebook the more stress you will encounter.

In the following infographic I found on Mashable.com there are some interesting yet scary statistics illustrated. Take note that there are over 10 million comments made in just 20 minutes on Facebook. And I believe the addiction shows moreso than anywhere else in this stat: 57% of people talk to people more online than in real life.

Mashable.com

Yikes, now that is a lot of information to take in. I’m stressed just thinking about my social network life now. Spring break can not come soon enough!

Tweet of the day:

charliesheen Charlie Sheen

Face it folks, you just feel better when you say it. #WINNING

White Collar Social Media

Going shopping? Want to virtually try on some clothes to see what they look like? Target came out with an app called Merona My Look Maker last summer and plenty of other clothing lines have done the same or similar things. Target also has a Facebook, Twitter and even a Foursquare site.

Social media is well known nowadays for its potential influence on businesses and the way they market to their customers. I can’t think of any current business that doesn’t use social media in some form, and for good reason. (That is unless your target customers are 95 years old, but even then…) There are so many people on social networking sites it is a great opportunity to get your company involved with some free publicity and advertise your brand. But there is a right way of doing it and a wrong way. Below is an example of how viral good word can spread about a new business. It's actually an ad for ConstantContact, an email marketing solutions company.

By choosing the right information to put out on the public sites, businesses may get just what they want. Say for example a business needs more employees so they use social media to recruit new employees. On the wrong end of using social media you could annoy and lose customers. By not being consistent with keeping up the site or being too prolific of a poster you could potentially scare off consumers.

Calvin Klein has barely used social media in our new digital age and that’s part of the reason they have fallen from the top of the clothing market since the 1990s. But they are about to launch one of the best planned multi-platform “digital campaigns” of recent history. They’ve revamped their website to allow for more interactivity. They created new apps for the iPhone, Android and Symbian markets. (I downloaded it and so far it looks really cool)

Mashable.com

Social Media Today, a blog done by social media experts, gives 5 new trends for 2011 that will change and shape business strategy. Number one on their list is:

1. Online video. Everywhere.
Online video is not a new phenomenon; however, what’s new about this avenue is that it is increasingly everywhere. The bar has been set high for the level of consumer interaction and this must include valuable interactive video. Video engagement is continuously increasing and in October alone, 5.4 billion videos were viewed -  2 billion of which were on Facebook.

The other trends for businesses to take advantage of are being able to market to a mobile audience at specific locations, dishing out special deals to social media users and being able to monitor what users are saying about the brand.

In closing, I leave you with some new thoughts on how a business should apply social media for a profit.

Tweet of the day:

KirstenSherwood Kirsten Sherwood

I'm going to miss @MayorEmanuel! -- Tweeter pretending to be Rahm Emanuel disappears http://t.co/W2s2X5c

How Celebrities Affect Online Trends

Anything that a celebrity does seems to be out in the public's eye. Their personal business is our entertainment. Nothing is private. And with the introduction of new social media, they are the main source for topics of conversation. Bloggers, Tweeters, Facebookers alike, talk about celebs and their offline lives as well as what the celebs post online. This is much like the tabloids such as the National Enquirer and People Magazine. Where celebrities go, fans follow. I like to call this the Ashton Kutcher Effect, as do a lot of people. When someone famous starts using a web site, their fans start using it too. This is just like when celebrities wore something it became trendy but now it has passed on to the digital, technological age.  Douglas MacMillan explains:

“Twitter co-founder Biz Stone credits high-profile users like actor Ashton Kutcher and basketball pro Shaquille O'Neal for bringing attention to the site of 140-character messages but says the company doesn't reserve any "special resources" for them. "Sometimes celebrities who love Twitter stop by and say hello," Stone says. "It's usually just a quiet tour and a lunchtime chat but it's really fun for us."”

And Twitter isn’t the only social networking site that has used celebrities to up their status. John Legend, a Grammy winning R & B singer, has a Tumblr site that brought a ton of people to that certain social networking site. 

Foursquare, the site that lets you “follow” people around, kind of creepy and I call it stalkerish, was made famous by celebrities like DJ Pauly D from the MTV show Jersey Shore. The reason I say it is like stalking is because foursquare users check in at different locations and it posts wherever they are online for anyone to see and creep on them (I know, sort of a technological determinist view). I'm sure Danielle used this site to track down Pauly D at the bar and mean mug him the whole night only to throw water on his face later.

The reason these celebrities endorse these social media sites is because there is money to be made. In fact, there is A LOT of money in endorsements and digital advertising. 

““We are pioneering the celebrity endorsement market in digital media, tapping the $50 billion spend on endorsements worldwide as well as the $35 billion spent in digital advertising," comments Ad.ly CE Arnie Gullov-Sing to Online Media Daily.”

And the reason this works? A lot of people like keeping up with the Joneses’. This is like that, only digital. People will join a certain social network site to feel more like the celebrities everyone idolizes. But on the social determinism side of things, celebrities are benefitting off of these new technologies as they should be. It makes us, the consumer, feel as if we don’t need the middle man to write about the celebrities’ everyday lives anymore. They can just tweet it to us themselves! 

Ashton Kutcher's Twitter account

Tweet of the day:

aplusk ashton kutcher

Can you have lunch at dinner?

Impact of Social Web on Current Events

Social media is a relatively new technology that our society is using. It is being used as a real-time information distributor and consumer. Gone are the days of waiting for the Sunday newspaper. Shoot, we don’t even need to refresh the internet page we’re on anymore; think about how Twitter and Facebook notify us of new posts.

This new social web is affecting our view and take on current events. For example, the State of the Union address was Tuesday night. Social networking services were tracked to see how many people were talking about the address and what exactly they were talking about. Mashable.com has some good information on this story.

State of the Union 2011

Sticking to a political theme, last night on Inside the NBA, Tracy Morgan stopped by and chatted with Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley. When asked if Sarah Palin was good looking Morgan made quite an offensive remark that TNT is now apologizing for. This created quite the buzz on Twitter and other social media sites with witty responses to his remarks. The top tweet says he would have been more offended if Tracy Morgan had said Sarah Palin was good presidential material.

Back on the court, Jimmer Fredette is a basketball player at Brigham Young University that has been tearing up the nets with how many points he’s been scoring. This led to many NBA superstars such as Steve Nash, John Wall, and Kevin Durant showing their praise for the young hot shot publicly on Twitter. 

What I’m taking out of all of this is that in order to stay relevant you must be in real-time nowadays. Immediacy has taken over our culture. We all need to take a step back from the social media every now and again to realize it, and also for some peace of mind.

Tweet of the day:

ConanOBrien Conan O'Brien

Lawyer question: It's still technically murder if you make ironic “air quotes” while doing it, right?

Trending Topics

Trending topics are all the rage in today’s vast internet blogosphere. New topics from around the world become popular whenever people tweet about them. Twitter’s Help Center describes them as providing Twitter users “the ‘most breaking’ news stories from around the world.” To post a trending topic all one must do is use the hash-tag symbol # and voila, you have the world’s newest topic, for a second or two.

As of right now the movie opening tonight featuring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, “#NoStringsAttached” is the number one trending topic in the world. People are definitely playing up this romantic comedy because of the two big stars in it, not to mention how good looking they are.

No Strings Attached IMDb

The number one trending topic of this week is “#10oclocklive” which is a startup British satire news program that had its first show last night. According to some reviews on internet news and entertainment sites, the show didn’t live up to the hype in Britain.

On Google, there is another site dedicated to hot topics and hot searches. So far today, some school closings in the Twin Cities even made the top 10 for hot topics and searches on Google. The cold weather caused many schools around the area to be closed. Another hot Google search was for a video of a woman falling into a fountain while texting last week. In case you haven't seen it, here it is.

Twitter and Google both use algorithms to decide which topics are hot and trending across the virtual world at the current time. These topics let people know what’s going on but they can also get addicting and people will keep refreshing twitter just to see what other people are doing and talking about. Another thing that I think Twitter and its trending topics can do is cause a lot of harm. It can harm our job applications because businesses are inspecting our social networking accounts more and more. It can harm our small businesses when they use Twitter as a marketing tool if their followers find their updates as meaningless and time consuming. It can also hurt our morals and values as a whole human race. 

Summing up my thoughts on Twitter and its trending topic and Google Trends, I’d like to say that the potential impact on society that trending topics is not realized fully yet. But with Twitter and Google, micro-blogging is becoming just as popular as regular blogging and easier to do, but with what consequences?

I feel like every blog needs a random stupid cat picture to make it legit...

Tweet of the day:

CNNLive CNN Live

Pres. Obama talks about growing the economy and making the U.S. more competitive after touring a GE plant. Live: http://on.cnn.com/cnndcl2

Test Post

This is a test post for Isaac Bolin's Comm 442 blog.

“To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price.” - Vince Lombardi