Can Twitter Beat Facebook and Google+?

As you might imagine, there’s been a lot of talk about social networks at the Web 2.0 Summit, and particularly the escalating three-way battle among Facebook, Google and Twitter. While Google and Facebook have had their fair share of announcements recently, Twitter just added some major firepower to its arsenal, courtesy of Apple.
What do you think? Can Twitter win the social network market share war? Let us know what you think in the comments. Find this topic interesting? Why not share it on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter or Google+?
One thing does seem clear. Deep Twitter integration with Apple’s iOS is huge for Twitter.
“The iOS integration is going to be absolutely huge for us, even better than we thought it was,” CEO Dick Costolo is quoted as saying at the Summit. “I didn’t realize how frictionless this would be. It’s so native.”
As far as Costolo is concerned, it is Twitter’s simplicity that is its biggest weapon against Facebook and Google+ (although I’d say that iOS integration is a pretty helpful weapon). He says part of the reason that Twitter has become so popular is because of its simplicity, and the fact that they’ve refrained from adding too many features, implying that this will continue to separate them from the pack as competitors continue to add more and more features.
That’s an interesting point, because Facebook and Google are basically in a “feature race” as Google’s Bradley Horowitz recently put it. In fact, Google CEO Larry Page touted the fact in the company’s earnings call last week, that Google+ added 100 features in 90 days.
Facebook certainly keeps changing things up.
Costolo’s comments are also interesting considering that this year, Twitter has perhaps added more features than any other time in Twitter’s history (since co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company). Dorsey, by the way, has recently even been called “the next Steve Jobs,” and by an early Apple employee. He does also run Square, which many see as a revolutionary product in the payments industry. It can’t hurt Twitter to have this kind of leadership at the core of its product development.
Perhaps the more important battle, however, is that for identity, rather than features, and that’s another area where that tight iOS integration might come in handy for Twitter. Apple announced that in its first 3 days of availability, it sold 4 million iPhone 4S devices (which run iOS 5). iOS 5 is also available for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, iPod Touch 3rd generation, and iPod Touch 4th generation. Word is that a third of eligible devices have already been updated (which means potentially 2/3 more could still be upgraded), and Costolo says daily iOS Twitter sign-ups have already tripled due to the new iOS integration.
The description of the Twitter integration from Apple says: “iOS 5 makes it even easier to tweet from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Sign in once in Settings, and suddenly you can tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, or Maps. Want to mention or @reply to a friend? Contacts applies your friends’ Twitter usernames and profile pictures. So you can start typing a name and iOS 5 does the rest. You can even add a location to any tweet, no matter which app you’re tweeting from.”
Once iOS 5 was finally released last week, Twitter wrote a blog post about it saying: “Simply enter your Twitter login information into your device settings, and you’ll always be connected to your Twitter account. This means you can tweet directly from Apple apps like Camera, Maps, Photos, Safari and YouTube, along with third party apps, such as Chomp, Flipboard, LivingSocial, Instagram, MadPad, PopSugar, Showyou,SoundTracking and Zynga’s Words with Friends.”

And it’s not as if you have to use iOS to use Twitter.
“We think we can reach every person on the planet, we think the way to do that is to simplify it,” Costolo is quoted as saying. “Over time, Google+ and Facebook will be more and more different than the experience we want to pass onto our users.”
On that note, the Telegraph has some interesting words from former Facebook President Sean Parker (who is still a shareholder), most notably, “The strategic threat to Facebook is that power users have gone to Twitter or to Google+.”
That doesn’t mean that all (or even the majority of) power users have abandoned Facebook entirely, but if a lot of them are using these competing services more, that means less time spent somewhere.
You know who else seems to be using Twitter more and more? The young.
Back to that topic of identity for a second. There is a lot of controversy about identity and the Internet. Facebook and Google+ both want your real identity as your identity with their respective services. I’m Chris Crum in real life, so they want me to be Chris Crum on Facebook and Google+ (Google is even stingy about what pics it lets authors use on their Google Profiles). On Twitter, however, I’m CCrum237. If I wanted, I could be anyone else I wanted to be (as long as the name wasn’t taken). There are valid points to both sides of the Internet anonymity debate, but the reality is that our online identities are being tied much more to the real world. It’s not just about status updates and picture sharing anymore. It’s about paying for goods at a store (among other things). At least that’s the direction we’re headed in. But that’s a conversation for another article.
4Chan founder Christopher Poole is quoted as saying at the summit that Facebook and Google approach to identity “degrades humanity,” and that “Facebook and Google do our identity wrong, Twitter does it better.” He’s just one man, but you better believe there are quite a few people who share similar views, and that is one clear differentiator of Twitter compared to its competitors. That’s one thing you can get with Twitter that you can’t get with Facebook or Google+. And that’s just another piece of the puzzle.
Twitter is currently worth $8 billion according Costolo, who is quoted as saying, “Let’s just call it an even $8 billion.” I have a feeling that number is going to go up substantially.
According to Costolo, Twitter users are sending out about 250 tweets per day. I’d be surprised if that number hasn’t increased significantly in another month.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say Twitter will be dethroning Facebook as the most-used social network in the near future, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen one day. Remember when Myspace was on top? Either way, it’s going to be an interesting battle to watch, especially now that Twitter is heavily integrated with the ultra popular iPhones and iPads.
What do you think? Will Twitter ever be able to surpass Facebook? Share your thoughts in the comments. 
About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum 
RESOURCE:http://www.webpronews.com/can-twitter-beat-facebook-and-google-2011-10

Google Encrypted Search Means No Info For Individual Queries

Google announced that it is going to begin encrypting search queries with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) as the default experience at Google.com when you search logged into your Google account. http://www.google.com will become https://www.google.com.
“This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe,” says Google product manager Evelyn Kao.
There’s a chance that your Google experience will be slower with SSL because the computer your’e using has to establish a secure connection with Google. This is interesting, considering that Google has put so much effort into speeding things up.
It’s worth noting that you can just go to https://www.google.com when you’re signed out, and still use encrypted search.
Naturally, webmasters and SEOs are contemplating the effects this will have on search engine optimization and analytics.
Sites visited from Google’s organic listings will be able to tell that the traffic is coming from Google, but they won’t be able to receive info about each individual query. They will, however, receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to the site for each of the past 30 days in Webmaster Tools.
“This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic,” says Kao. “If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”
“When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google ‘organic’ search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site,” says Amy Chang on the Google Analytics blog. “Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google ‘cpc’.”
“We are still measuring all SEO traffic. You will still be able to see your conversion rates, segmentations, and more,” she adds. “To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token ‘not provided)’ within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that ‘cpc’ paid search data is not affected.”
Google is making the encrypted search available on all of its search properties except for Maps.

Tags: analytics , encrypted search , Google , google analytics , Privacy , search , Security , SSL , webmaster tools

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum 

resource:http://www.webpronews.com/google-encrypted-search-means-no-info-for-individual-queries-2011-10

Google Tells You Exactly Where To Let Them Know When You’ve Been Hit By Panda

Google’s Kaspar Szymanski wrote a Google+ update yesterday afternoon, “Here’s the uber long thread on #Google webmaster help forum; if you think your legitimate, original content site has been affected by our #Panda update please feel free to let us know and tune in. We also have escalation forums where webmasters can escalate non-English sites in order to help us fine tune recent algorithms.
Szymanski is a “Google web spam fighter,” who says his occupation is “hunting web spam in Google search results and spearheading Google’s webmaster outreach efforts.
The thread is here, and it is long indeed. 163 pages long.
Google is indeed watching it though. Google’s John Mueller responded to a Barry Schwartz post when he suggested that it might be easy for Google to miss a post in such a long thread. Mueller wrote, “It’s certainly easier to follow a single thread than to follow lots of threads spread out across the web. Even if not all of the issues have the same cause, it makes it easier to track them, and pass possible issues on where appropriate.”
“If we follow as they get posted, we don’t have to go through the previous posts,” he said. “I subscribe to threads like these via email, it makes it easier to focus on the new posts, do a preliminary diagnosis and forward things where appropriate.” He later added that he sees it more as a feed than a discussion thread.
Users can subscribe to email alerts or RSS for when new replies are posted.
On a semi-related note, I ran across this video being shared on Google+. It doesn’t have anything to do with Google, but it has a Panda doing mean things, so I thought it seemed worth passing on.
About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum 

resource:http://www.webpronews.com/google-tells-you-exactly-where-to-let-them-know-when-youve-been-hit-by-panda-2011-10

Flow Visualization Comes to Google Analytics

Google announced the launch of Flow Visualization in Google Analytics. This is described as a tool that lets you analyze site insights graphically, and instantly understand how visitors flow across pages on your site.
There are actually two flow visualizations upon launch: Visitors Flow and Goal Flow. These will be rolling out to all accounts starting this week. More visualizations will come out later.
Visitors Flow shows who visitors flow through your site by traffic source or other dimensions, and see the path they take to the exit. This could be a pretty helpful tool in analyzing bounces and exits and useful for trying to reduce them. This visualization is shown in the image above.
“Nodes are automatically clustered according to an intelligence algorithm that groups together the most likely visitor flow through a site,” explains Phil Mui of the Google Analytics team. “You’ll also notice that we made the visualization highly interactive. You can interact with the graph to highlight different pathways, and to see information about specific nodes and connections. For example, if you want to dive deeper into your “specials” set of pages, you can hover over the node to see more at a glance.”
Goal Flow, pictured below, shows how visitors flow through your goal steps and where they dropped off. ” Because the goal steps are defined by the site owner, they should reflect the important steps and page groups of interest to the site,” says Mui. “In this first iteration, we’re supporting only URL goals, but we’ll soon be adding events and possibly other goal types.”

He says Goal Flow helps you understand the relative volume of visits by dimension (traffic, source, campaign, browser), the rates at which visitors abandon different paths, where and how visitors navigate the steps you define, and how they interact with your site (in terms of things like backtracking to previous goal steps).
Any advanced segments can be applied to a Flow Visualizer, and you can even visualize “backward” to see reverse paths to “identify suboptimal content”.
In the comments on Google’s announcement, people are already calling the feature a game changer. Do you agree?
resource:http://www.webpronews.com/google-analytics-flow-visualization-2011-10

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum

Can the Post Office Survive the Digital Age?

n an article earlier this year, we asked, “Is email killing the post office?” Well, the post office is not dead yet, but it’s not helping from the looks of it. The U.S. Postal Service doesn’t have the money it needs to pay its bills, and email and the web are clearly major factors.

Can the post office survive the digital age? Tell us what you think.
A report from the New York Times is all but predicting the U.S. Postal Service’s demise. “The agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances,” the report says.
“If Congress doesn’t act, we will default,” Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe is quoted as saying.
Whew we discussed the subject before, Bloomberg BusinessWeek had put out a lengthy report looking at the decline of the USPS and its contributing factors. While touching on email, it looked more at comparison of USPS performance versus that of FedEx, UPS and DHL, as well as their international counterparts.
Despite talk that social media might one day kill email, email has proven time and time again that it is still a vital part of the Internet. A report from Pew Internet recently found that email (along with search) is the top activity online adults engage in on the web – way more than social media (though that’s growing significantly).
Unfortunately for the USPS, that conversation is irrelevant, because social media and email go hand in hand when it comes to less communication by “snail mail” – a phrase that the post office no doubt despises.
One can only imagine how mobile has contributed to even more communication by web over mail. Now the Internet is in your pocket at all times, not to mention the phone – another classic non-mail form of communication. Last week, Nielsen put out a report finding that 40% of mobile users in the U.S. use smartphones.
Of course email isn’t the only part of the web that is hurting the post office. Online bill pay is a big contributor as well – also now handily available from your pocket.
It’s just easier, cheaper and more efficient to communicate digitally.
Total mail volume decreased by 20% from 2006 to 2010, according to that Bloomberg report. The numbers can only be getting worse for the post office.
There will always be packages, but the digital age certainly continues to leave its mark on those as well. Movies, music and books are all digital now. Earlier this year, Amazon announced that Kindle books were outselling print books. Tablet (namely iPad) sales are on fire. The USPS also has to compete with those other parcel services too.
The Postal Service’s payment is due on September 30. From the sound of it, consumers wouldn’t likely feel the effects so much until early next year. At least the post office should remain open for the holidays.
Is the USPS in serious trouble or is this just a temporary set-back? Let us know what you think in the comments.
About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 Google: +Chris Crum
  source: http://www.webpronews.com/post-office-email-web-2011-09

“TSA Rape” Blog Post A Matter of First Amendment Rights?

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, many will take the time to not only reflect upon the day itself, but also the decade following the WTC attacks. American life has changed dramatically since that day, but it’s not always easy to cite tangible examples of how it has changed.
But sometimes it is. And the TSA is one entity that has gained quite a bit of attention since then. As airports have continued to implement stronger safety measures over the last decade, many have put the Transportation Security Administration into the crosshairs, railing against random searches and pat-downs – which they say violate some of their basic human rights. One thing on which we can all agree – getting patted down in a airport isn’t a whole lot of fun.
One woman had a particularly nasty experience during a TSA pat-down. According to columnist and blogger Amy Alkon, her experience with a particular TSA agent went way past uncomfortable.
In a blog post, Alkon details a March 31st incident where she accuses TSA agent Thedala Magee of “raping” her with her hand during a public pat-down in Los Angeles.
Alkon writes about her disapproval of the whole procedure, saying that the pat-downs are both a physical violation as well as a constitutional one. One that day, she admits that she decided to make a scene on purpose, to bring attention to what she thinks is an unfair act, “to make it uncomfortable for them to violate us and our rights,” she said. So she began sobbing, loudly. According to Alkon, this was the response from the female TSA agent –

Nearing the end of this violation, I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants. Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked — utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.
Upon leaving, still sobbing, I yelled to the woman, “YOU RAPED ME.” And I took her name to see if I could file sexual assault charges on my return. This woman, and all of those who support this system deserve no less than this sort of unpleasant experience, and from all of us.

Apparently, the lawsuit idea fell through as her lawyer told her she had an unwinnable case.
But now, the TSA agent in question is threatening to sue Alkon for her blog post, claiming defamation. Magee has asked for $500,000 as well as the removal of the blog post.
it doesn’t look like Alkon is going to comply with that request, as she writes today on her blog –

Magee is looking for me to pay her $500K, apologize to her, and take down my blog item about her — because I had the nerve to exercise my First Amendment rights and complain after she jammed her hand sideways into my vagina four times. (Unfortunately for Ms. Magee, I’ve always made a pretty crappy victim.)

She has also gained the services of a First Amendment lawyer named Marc Randazza who is working the case pro bono.
The letter that Magee sent Alkon requesting the monetary damages and the retraction of the “rape” allegations says that the “outbursts in public and writings on the internet” have subjected Magee to “hatred, contempt, and ridicule” and caused her “severe emotional distress, fear, and problems doing her duty.”
Alkon’s lawyer Randazza sent a letter back, saying –

Your client aggressively pushed her fingers into my client’s vulva. I am certain that she did not expect to find a bomb there. She did this to humiliate my client, to punish her for exercising her rights, and to send a message to others who might do the same. It was absolutely a sexual assault, perpetrated in order to exercise power over the victim. We agree with Ms. Alkon’s characterization of this crime as “rape,” and so would any reasonable juror.

He then quotes precedent defending the use of the word “rape” as hyperbolic language. So even if Magee didn’t “rape” Alkon in some meaning of the word, she has the right to characterize it as such.
TSAAlkonThedalaMageeLtr

Response to TSA Agent legal threat

TSA pat-downs have remained a hot button issue for years. Recently, the Texas legislature was forced to pull their “Groping Bill” when the U.S. Attorney for Texas warned that the passing of said bill would most definitely result in flight shutdowns. The “Groping Bill” would have made any TSA pat-down that involved the anus, buttocks or sexual organs a crime.
If everything actually happened as Alkon reports, then you have to agree that this TSA agent’s actions crossed the line – no matter where you stand on the larger issue. Still, some would argue that penalizing the agent for enforcing policies under the instruction of the federal government is the wrong approach. Although it’s highly unlikely that a superior has ever told an agent to go as far as Magee supposedly went.
Should Alkon have the right to make these statements about her experience on her blog? Does a blog post like that fall into the realm of defamation of character? Let us know what you think.

About Josh Wolford
Josh Wolford is a staff writer for WebProNews. He likes beer, Sriracha and Cormac McCarthy. Twitter: @joshgwolf Google: Google+ 

source:http://www.webpronews.com/tsa-rape-blog-post-a-matter-of-first-amendment-rights-2011-09

iPhone 5 Rumor: First Photo From The New Device?

A wild iPhone 5 photo appears! More specifically, a photo supposedly taken from an iPhone 5. If accurate, this would be the first pic ever taken from the upcoming device to make its way to the internet – as well as the most famous uni and salmon sushi pic of all time.
Pocketnow thinks that they’ve stumbled upon the first known photo taken with an iPhone 5, cleverly labeled as “taken with an iPhone 4.” Not so fast, they say -

This (very attractive) photo claims to have been taken by an iPhone 4, but the rest of its EXIF data tells a different story: although the image has been cropped to 2235×2291 (5.12 megapixels), the original picture was a much larger 3264×2448 — or just shy of eight megapixels. What’s more, the lens was recorded as a 4.3mm f/2.4, which is closer to that of a point-and-shoot than the iPhone 4′s actual 3.85mm f/2.8. (Remember that the upcoming HTC Runnymede is said to have an aperture of f/2.2.)

Basically, this photo was taken with a much better camera than exists in any current iPhone model. Once of the earliest and most persistent iPhone 5 rumors has been the addition of an 8 megapixel camera. Here’s the sushi pic in question -

Not only that, but the geotagged location of the photo is 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, sticking this plate of sushi smack dab in the middle of Apple’s campus. Perhaps an eager staffer documenting his lunch with a brand new iPhone?
Or a manipulated photo? Of course the EXIF data could have been misrepresented and the geo data could have been faked. But the evidence as is suggests that we might be looking at what photos will look like when taken by the iPhone 5.
And it looks pretty good, am I right?

About Josh Wolford
Josh Wolford is a staff writer for WebProNews. He likes beer, Sriracha and Cormac McCarthy. Twitter: @joshgwolf Google: Google+ 
source:http://www.webpronews.com/iphone-5-rumor-first-photo-from-the-new-device-2011-09