Facebook re-design the feed

“In a move that shouldn’t surprise anyone, Facebook is re-organizing users’ homepages. The new look homepage will allow users to “see the things they’re most interested in.” The main elements that will power the new layout are, the revamped Friend Lists, the new Subscribe button, and a real-time ticker.

One notable change is that the verbiage “post” seems to be completely removed from the Facebook vocabulary. All mentions of content-formerly-known-as-posts are now labeled as “stories.”

The rationale behind the new layout ironically takes after newspapers, the very form of media that Facebook is slowly replacing. The release states that:

“When you pick up a newspaper after not reading it for a week, the front page quickly clues you into the most interesting stories. In the past, News Feed hasn’t worked like that. Updates slide down in chronological order so it’s tough to zero in on what matters most.

In order to achieve this, some posts will be labeled as a “Top Story” with a blue mark the left hand corner”

Images will also be much larger and easier to view from the homepage. For those avid Facebook users, new stories will show above the “Top Stories” section”

See more at Search Engine Land

Facebook ‘planning new buttons’

“The cat is out of the bag that Facebook is going to launch something big at its developer conference f8 this week. We’ve heard about the social music services that could be debuting in a few days, but as the New York Times conveyed this past weekend, Facebook is planning for ways to surface personal content better. And we’ve heard from a source that Facebook will introduce new buttons on the wall that will begin introducing some granularity to the “Like” concept. We’re told these new buttons are “Read,” “Listened,” “Watched.” The network will also soon launch new social commerce buttons like “Want” following the introductions of the aforementioned buttons.”

See more at TechCrunch

Twitter announce new analytics

“Today we’re announcing Twitter Web Analytics, a tool that helps website owners understand how much traffic they receive from Twitter and the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their sites. Twitter Web Analytics was driven by the acquisition of BackType, which we announced in July.

The product provides three key benefits:

• Understand how much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network
• See the amount of traffic Twitter sends to your site
• Measure the effectiveness of your Tweet Button integration”

See more here 

The future of Twitter ads? Some interesting thoughts from John Battelle

“As I posted earlier, last week I had a chance to sit down with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. We had a pretty focused chat on Twitter's news of the week, but I also got a number of questions in about Twitter's next generation of ad products.

As usual, Dick was frank where he could be, and demurred when I pushed too hard. (I'll be talking to him at length at Web 2 Summit next month.) However, a clear-enough picture emerged such that I might do some "thinking out loud" about where Twitter's ad platform is going. That, combined with some very well-placed sources who are in a position to know about Twitter's ad plans, gives me a chance to outline what, to the best of my knowledge, will be the next generation of Twitter's ad offerings.

I have to say, if the company pulls it off, the company is sitting on a Very Big Play. But if you read my post Twitter and the Ultimate Algorithm, you already knew that.

In that post, I laid out what I thought to be Twitter's biggest problem/opportunity: surfacing the right content, in the right context, to the right person at the right time. It's one of the largest computer science and social engineering problems on the web today, a fascinating opportunity to leverage what is becoming a real time database of folks' implicit and explicitly declared interests.”

See more here

Twitter claims 100m active users

“Twitter has 100 million active users logging in at least once a month and 50 million active users every day, CEO Dick Costolo revealed Thursday.

The microblogging service has a total of 200 million registered users, but how many of those are actually regulars has been open to debate for some time. Costolo, in an informal chat with tech reporters he called his “state of the union,” revealed that exactly half of them log in monthly — a number he says is up 82% since the beginning of the year.

The CEO offered a whole raft of statistics to prove that Twitter is healthy and growing like a weed — especially on mobile platforms. Some 55 million users log on to Twitter from their phone or tablet every month. Web-based users are on the rise, too: Twitter.com now sees 400 million visitors a month, up from 250 million at the beginning of the year, Costolo says.”

See more here

Facebook tests automatically grouping friends

“Facebook has had the Friend Lists feature for a long time, but few users actually know about it, and even fewer use it. Clearly the social networking giant is figuring out a way to fix the problem.

You also have smart lists that update themselves for coworkers, classmates, and local friends. You can add or remove anyone to these lists at any time.

(Coworker icon) This will be a list of friends who work with you.

(Classmate icon) This will be a list of friends who attend school with you.

(Local icon) This will be a list of people who live within 50 miles of your current city.

These lists appear to have two major uses. The first is for sharing content with: you can choose a list you created manually or one that was created for you from the drop-down menu in the bottom right of the “What’s on your mind?” status box. The second is for the News Feed: you will be able to filter your News Feed to only display content from one (or more?) of your friend lists.

These changes are clearly an answer to Google+ Circles. Two months ago, four Facebook engineers built Circle Hack, which lets you build friend lists on Facebook exactly how you build Circles on Google+.”

See more here 

Google buys restaurant guide Zagat

"Did you know there's a place in Menlo Park near the Safeway that has a 27 food rating?” one of my friends asked me that about two years ago, and I was struck because I immediately knew what it meant. Food rating... 30 point scale... Zagat. And the place... had to be good. With no other context, I instantly recognized and trusted Zagat's review and recommendation.

So, today, I'm thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat. Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.

With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer based-surveys, recommendations and reviews than anyone else in the industry."

See more here

Nearly 50% of UK internet users also use mobile internet

“Almost half of UK internet users are going online via mobile phone data connections, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Some 45% of people surveyed said they made use of the net while out and about, compared with 31% in 2010.

The most rapid growth was among younger people, where 71% of internet-connected 16 to 24-year-olds used mobiles.

Domestic internet use also rose. According to the ONS, 77% of households now have access to a net connection.

That figure was up 4% from the previous year, representing the slowest rate of growth since the ONS survey began in 2006.”

See more here

Google promote ‘Offers’ on their search page

Google Inc promoted a Groupon-like daily deals offer on its home page on Wednesday for the first time, a rare instance of the Internet giant using its prized online real estate for advertising.

The world's No.1 Web-search engine launched a daily deals business in certain cities this year -- called Google Offers -- to try and counter Groupon's increasing draw for Web surfers.

Wednesday's daily deal was the first time a Google Offers product has been promoted on its minimalist website, and may signal an escalation of competition with Groupon -- which has filed for an IPO sources say could happen as soon as next month.

The pair are vying for advertising dollars from local businesses, such as restaurants and retail stores.

A short blurb beneath Google's sparse home page -- a valued window into a plethora of services from email to maps -- offered visitors $25 tickets to New York's American Museum of Natural History for the discounted price of $5.

See more here

Facebook kills Daily Deals, but keeps Checkin Deals

After quietly announcing they were killing off their nascent Deals product this afternoon, Facebook caused some confusion. You see, with the decision to kill off Facebook Places earlier in the week, everyone wondered what it meant for the location-based deals they launched alongside it? Those would remain alive, Facebook said at the time. But does today’s execution change anything?

No, says Facebook. Daily Deals are separate from Check-in Deals. The Check-in Deals will work a bit different with the end of Places, but the company will continue to support and enhance that product. Daily Deals are dead — and my email account thanks them for that.

See more here

Google users are losing interest in Google+

Google+ got a ton of buzz when it launched in June, and got a lot of visitors thanks to its integration across Google Web sites. But people don't seem to be sticking around very long after they check it out.

Earlier today, social marketing company DreamGrow posted some stats from Alexa that show a steep drop-off in Google+ traffic as a percentage of overall Google traffic. At the beginning of August, 2.89% of all Google.com traffic coming into Alexa's tracking system was coming from Google+. Now, it's only 1.84%. That's a drop of nearly one-third in less than a month. Alexa is not the most reliable way to track Web traffic, but numerous reports from Experian Hitwise show a similar pattern: lots of people are checking Google+ out, but they seem to be dropping out pretty fast. 

Anecdotally, it seems like the site is pretty active -- we're still getting dozens of notifications about new followers every day, and there are some interesting posts and debates showing up there. It's definitely not a dead zone.

See more here