A few days ago I wrote, “Facebook is Dying, Social is Not,” and it appears that I hit a nerve. The article has so far been read by more than 25,000+ readers, in less than 3 days. It is safe to say that the complexity and privacy issues are something people really cares about.
Ethan Beard, director of Facebook's developer network, stated yesterday that "I think the response from users that we've seen from the products we launched at has been quite positive. People are actively opting-in to engage with the social Web. The response from users speaks very, very loudly that they love what we're doing. I think there's a lot of other talk that's not coming from users necessarily. There's been a lot of interest from the media, from organizations and officials. But to be honest, the user response has been overwhelmingly positive."
Uhmmm... right. Ethan, I don’t think you are really listening.
One thing that worries me though, is that many people commented that they are quitting Facebook. If you are only using Facebook to keep up with your personal friends, then fine, that’s your choice.
But, if you use social media as a way to connect, you need to use every channel available, including Facebook.
You need to be where people are, instead of asking people to come to you. You don’t get to decide what media to use.
I’m not quitting Facebook, nor am I recommending that you quit. I think Facebook is doing many things for the wrong reason, I think the complexity and privacy issues are killing them. I think that once an alternative present itself, Facebook might very well end up like MySpace.
But right now. A big part of my audience is using Facebook, and it is my responsibility to make sure that they can connect and share to what I do - on whatever platform they choose to be on.
That’s why you see a Facebook sharing button next to this article. That’s why I got a Facebook Social Plugin in my sidebar (with a like button). That’s why this site include Open Graph meta info, and admin code. That why I got a Facebook profile and page.
You need to be where your audience is, and support whatever community they use. But, it is also a good idea to be embrace many social channels, and mix them together. That way, your social presence isn’t siloed, and if one loses popularity, you don’t lose your audience.
As you are probably aware, there were a big gas explosion and ongoing firestorm in the San Francisco suburb San Bruno. It is a terrible tragedy, but that didn't stop a local coffee shop from taking advantage of the whole ordeal by to promote their shop.
We have all heard about the absurd lawsuit between HP and “former-HP-chief-exec-turned-Oracle-exec” Mark Hurd. HP is suing him for revealing trade secrets *in the future*.
You have probably heard about all the buzz around net neutrality, the concept of equal access to the internet.
These days, everyone talks about HTML5. All the big guys like Apple, Google, and Microsoft put a lot of effort into making it happen. Google is especially focused on bringing HTML5 and web apps into the world.
Want to try out the new Digg 4 - go here http://new.digg.com (limited access - be quick)
Earlier today On2, the company behind the video codec used in the FLV video format (used by Flash), told us that they will discontinue their Flix video product line.
There is one story that keeps popping up about Wired Magazine reporting that 26% of their traffic is now coming from the iPad. A truly amazing number. But there something odd about it. I'm not seeing that anywhere else. So I did a little digging.
My use of the stream have now reached a point where I am no longer looking for news. Instead, my world is pretty much divided into two types of information. Updates that are followable, and updates that isn’t. I am now spending 99% of my time on the first group.
Foursquare Grader has compiled a list of the percentage of people who have been rewarded a badge on Foursquare. This tells us a lot about how it is being used. Most social networks have a relatively low activity rate, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Every now and then a short video is released that show just how much the world has changed. One of the best ones are “The Social Media Revolution” from Socialnomics. Yesterday they released an updated version, with all the latest stats.
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