Twitter's got problems. Interesting article which needs no real summary.

Article credit: Computer World By Juan Carlos Perez

IDG News Service – The recurrent technical problems that have affected Twitter for the past seven weeks have also taken a toll on developers of external applications built for the microblogging service.

Throughout the outages, malfunctions and bugs that began the second week of June and hit their high point during the soccer World Cup, makers of third-party applications have tried to weather the storm while having little or no control over the situation.

The frequent and disruptive technical issues have forced these developers, many of whom generate significant revenue from their Twitter applications, to scramble to appease their angry users, while trying to protect their brands and cope with lost business.

"Twitter API issues in the previous weeks have been terrible for us," said Loic Le Meur, founder and CEO of Seesmic, which makes Twitter client applications for various desktop and mobile platforms.

Users always blame Seesmic first since it's their primary interface to Twitter. It's extremely frustrating because there is nothing else we can do than warning users Twitter has problems. It is very damaging for us since users start to look for alternatives, which fortunately have the same problems, but damage to the brand is done," he said via e-mail.

Twitter, founded in 2006, became notorious back in 2007 and the first half of 2008 for its lengthy outages, but since then it steadily improved the reliability of the service. It had been having a particularly solid 2010 until June rolled around.

"It had been really stable for a long time and then this just came up as a bit of a surprise," said Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, which makes a client application to manage accounts from Twitter and other social media services.

At various points since the problems started in early June, a very apologetic Twitter has blamed the problems on a variety of factors, including massive traffic spikes caused by World Cup games, internal system bugs, server upgrades gone wrong and faulty network configurations.

"It's been a bit disruptive and frustrating because many people don't know if it's us or Twitter, and they'll just assume it's us. Then we have a communication issue we have to address," Holmes said in a telephone interview.

Although the issues have dropped in frequency and intensity in the past two weeks, some developers remain doubtful of Twitter's ability to provide a consistently stable service…….read more at http://www.wisdeo.com/articles/view_post/7326

In May 2010, social platforms surpassed the number of visits by Internet users when compared to the search giant Google. Google is the most popular search engine in town, if not the only search engine that really remains "standing". I mean who uses Yahoo for search anymore (anyone???)?
 
Top visited sites remain Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and then the rest.

But I don't see how Facebook can ever become a "search engine". It just doesn't have the content that Google has. Facebook and other social platforms have "user-generated" content. So from a user reach perspective, they are great tools for businesses. But individuals and companies will continue to use Google as a search engine to find relevant information. Hence the need for search engine optimization and top rankings. But since top rankings can benefit from links from social networks, businesses benefit from incorporating search engine optimization and social networking together.

Google's got competition in Facebook for sure from a simple "user" number perspective which I can see why. Grandmas who'd never go to Google to search for anything would definitely go to Facebook to see pictures of their grandkids. Right?
 
So is it really surprising then that Facebook will continue to lead the "number of users" statistics? But when it comes to finding anything at all; from cooking tips to products to vacation spots, Google's where I'm going to be and so are you.

If I had a dime every time I heard "but I don't see how "Facebook" can help my business", I'd be a rich man! Yes, I know I've said this a guzzilian times but it's true.

Social networking is really nothing more than social brandcasting – meaning casting your brand out there in the social networks, period! So why are businesses not able to see the value of Brandcasting and leveraging the tools available to them to promote themselves?
 
Social Brandcasting benefits are quite simple:

• You can reach more people through popular sites like Facebook & Twitter than through ANY chamber event you may attend
• You can continuously promote your services and company events without spending a dime on print materials
• You can go on a "ra ra" campaign in a non-obtrusive manner and no one will think twice about it online

You can do "horizontal" brandcasting which is to everyone and everywhere across the board, same message, same positioning. Then you can do the "vertical" brandcasting where you position different messages on different platforms.  By balancing quantity (number of followers, fans, connections) and quality (what you say, how you say, the personna you create of yourself or your company online, etc.) you get the biggest bang for your buck.

Capice? If not, call me and I'll be more than happy to discuss this at length cause this is what my company does day in and day out!

Cyber criminal activity is growing and social networking sites are leading the pack in helping spread this activity. No, not intentionally but by virtue of the fact that social networking sites allow ease of sharing content, malware is easy to pass around.

According to a new report released by Blue Coat, a cyber security firm, cyber criminal activity is spreading so rapidly that security solutions providers are unable to keep up and continue to play catch-up.

Blue Coat reported that online storage and software downloading sites were two of the most common sites where malware was hidden. However what was most concerning in Blue Coat's report was that since social networking sites accounted for 25% of top internet activity, that's where most of the cyber attacks are happening. When networking on popular networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, opening links that contain malware is the leading cause for the spread of malware.

We've seen such attacks on Twitter where a user gets a tweet asking him or her to change their password and the minute they do so, their account is hacked into.

Some simple, common sense steps will help you from falling victim to malware and cyber criminal activity:

• Change your passwords on a regular frequency
• Make your passwords complicated enough so they cannot be guessed. Trust me, "password" is NOT a good password.
• Use tools like Tweetdeck for Twitter where you can "preview" links before opening them.
• Do NOT click on links sent to you via Direct Message (DM) on Twitter from someone you know
• On Facebook, use caution when accepting friend requests from people even if they are connected to others in your network
• Think before you post ANYTHING, and I mean anything. Sharing vacation plans online, is a strong no-no.
• Use caution when providing your information on new sites, you can't know how secure or not secure they may be.

Social networking requires MORE not less caution than before. Before, all we had to worry about was spam in our emails. Now, it's real-time information that's out there for anyone and everyone to see. Prevention is better than cure when networking online; so prevent the "bare-all" behavior and you'll be fine.

Interesting! A two-day London summit had social media activists from across the globe exploring ways to combat extremism using popular social networks. The event was organized by Jason Leibman who is the co-founder of the Alliance for Youth Movement and who stated that popular social networks like Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter are critical tools to fight extremism.
  
He reiterated the point that we always tell our prospects and clients – which is that social networks provided a wider reach at lower cost and allow the spread of powerful messaging in an easy manner.

I found that there are many ways people are using social networks for political awareness. Twitter was used to protest Iran's censorship on the Internet, people in Nigeria are using their phones to help people learn more about the next elections, and we ourselves know that the biggest social media success story is our US president Barack Obama who systematically created an outreach that is unparalleled anywhere, through popular social networks.

So the uses for social networks continue to grow and surprise some of us. We, the hands-on practitioners of social marketing feel that it's time for a lifestyle change for businesses. Businesses need to embrace social media today because that's the only way we'll all be able to remain viable, current, and engaged.

Move over computer, you are becoming extinct; well at least slowly moving into oblivion as far as social networking sites go. Comscore, a company which reports web metrics found that 1 of 3 smartphone users accessed social networking sites through their mobile browsers. Facebook saw a 112% increase in mobile users and Twitter saw a 347% increase.

Comscore senior VP of mobile thinks that "Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser."

The mobile social media access numbers reported by Comscore are staggering when you think about it. Over 25 MI Facebook users and approximately 5 million Twitter users logged in using mobile browsers.
 
Here's some food for thought for all business owners out there:

You know that mobile users aren't just logging into Facebook and Twitter through their mobile browsers. They're doing other browsing too; from buying quick ticket items to ordering food.

Are you ready with a "MOBILE" compatible website for these mobile users?

79 percent of Fortune Global 100 companies are at least on one of the following four social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or a Corporate Blog.This according to Burson-Marsteller, a company that conducts studies on social media usage.

However, the same study found that Asian companies are shying away from Facebook and Twitter, focusing more on using local platforms that are used in their country or region. Those social networks include Mixi in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea and Baidu Spaces and Renren in China. These Asian companies appear to limiting their usage of Facebook and Twitter only to communicate with consumers in international markets. They prefer the local social networks for reaching their most targeted audience.
 
According to Burson-Marsteller, Asian companies are more concerned about time, money, and measurement of their social media involvement thus making their use of social networks much more conservative.

The Global Social Media Check-up is yet another social media usage study released by Burson-Marsteller. The study shows that:

• Globally, 65% of Fortune 100 companies have active accounts on Twitter
• 54% have a Facebook fan page
• 50% have a YouTube channel
• 33% have a corporate blog. 

Overall though, only 20% of Fortune 100 companies, globally, are using all four platforms. Only 20%!!! What are they thinking? If they can do one or two, they can certainly do all four.

But the good news again is that Twitter is the platform of choice for 65% of them. So get yourself on Twitter and make sure you are focusing on balancing quality AND quantity of your Twitter participation. What I mean is be sure to have "Quality" content while you continue to build the "Quantity" or number of followers who will read your tweets.

Well, if you have a Facebook account, you know how much time you spend on Facebook and you also know how much time others are spending, right? Now we have statistics that show that Facebook is the 2nd most popular site from a total number of visitors perspective.

Compete Inc, (a company which publishes research data on these kinds of interesting web & other stuff) published results that showed that Facebook's 134 million unique visitors in January bypassed Yahoo's 132 million unique but was just short of the 147 million unique visitors on Google.

Another statistic reported by Compete was that users spent 11.6% of their web time on Facebook which is more than double the time they spent individually on Yahoo or Google.

I think that Facebook's popularity is largely due to the connectivity it offers which no other site currently offers. Even Google Buzz just doesn't have the same "connectivity" and interactivity which I feel Facebook offers.
 
Will Facebook bypass Google in traffic sometime soon? Well, given the January 2010 numbers reported by Compete Inc (shown above), I think that that could happen sooner rather than later. It's not just the sheer volume of users interested in networking with family and friends that will make Facebook the number one site. I think it's also because Facebook offers personal and business interactions; what with the fan page and group participation opportunities that no other site offers. LinkedIn and Google's Buzz have a few features that may grow over time but I feel that they have a while to go before they catch up with Facebook. 
 

Fed up with its lack of success and progress in the Social Media space, Google recently hired social media evangelists such as Chris Messina, Will Norris, and former Plaxo executive Joseph Smarr to lead a new "Social Web Team".

Is Google unsuccessful in the Social landscape because the giant itself doesn't have it's own social media strategy?

Google's social web products like Orkut, Google Friend Connect, OpenSocial, Google Profiles, and even Google Wave haven't had much acceptance on the social front. None of these products have resonated with the public or the developers that architect the social-networking technologies. Coupled with the shutting down of acquisitions DodgeBall and Jaiku due to budget cuts, Google suffered another social-media blow when its attempt to acquire Yelp failed.

Google's biggest and probably only success in social networking is YouTube. However, the core of it as well as its initial base of mainstream popularity preceded the Google buyout.

Other than that, what exactly has Google contributed to social networking?
 
So what will the big dogs Messina, Norris and Smarr do for Google? Hopefully a focus, new product ideas, and a way to take on Facebook???