Social trajectories and the ones that matter

Posted on September 27, 2011 at 8:51 am UK

This chart showing the share of time spent online by US social networkers is interesting in that Facebook’s usage-growth trajectory is consistent over quite a long period, three years or so.

The overall picture suggests that there are only two dominant players that matter – Google and Facebook. AOL looks in terminal decline with Microsoft not looking much better. The surprise could be Yahoo which is still up there just behind Google Sites (I’m not entirely sure what “Google Sites” are).

What’s perhaps more interesting is the bit that’s not there yet: all of Q3 2011 -> Q4 2011 and into 2012, to take into account Google+ which opened as an invite-only experiment in July with the doors thrown wide open just last week; and the new Facebook.

(Via AllThingsD)

[Later] Via ReadWriteWeb, news from Experian Hitwise showing that visits to Google+ increased by 1,269% last week – the first week since it opened to all.

RWW reports that the site received 15 million US visits, up from 1.1 million the week before. Google+ went from ranking 54th in Hitwise’s Social Networking and Forums category to ranking 8th in just one week, says RWW.

Hitwise has the visual evidence:

The ugliness of social media

Posted on September 26, 2011 at 7:13 am UK

It’s a concise article in The Guardian but it’s powerful, shining a light on a truly ugly side of human behaviour.

The subject is rape and, as the article’s subtitle so aptly puts it, how social media channels like Facebook "provide outlets for the worst kind of misogyny."

Who likes rape? Loads of people! And they tell the world about it on Facebook. Let’s start with the page, "Riding Your Girlfriend Softly Cause You Don’t Want to Wake Her Up". Sleep rape too un-violent? Try "Throwing Bricks at Sluts", check out the gallery and vote Bang, or Brick. The page called "Don’t You Hate It When You Punch a Slut in the Mouth and They Suck It," has 2,086 likes. If you want stronger stuff, try "Punching Pregnant Women in the Stomach." Too tame? "Abducting, Raping and Violently Murdering Your Friend, as a Joke" has more than 16,600 likes so rape fans needn’t feel alone.

Writer Bidisha also lights up Twitter as another amplifier of the ugly.

[...] Recently, Twitter trended "Reasons to beat your girlfriend", "Worst names for a vagina", and "Birthday present for side chick" (meaning, mistress).

Other than write posts like this to help draw attention to what’s happening, what can anyone do to stop this ugliness? Nothing it seems: Facebook, Twitter and other online services seem oblivious to such behaviours, upholding as so often is the case people’s right to free expression and freedoms of speech as long as that doesn’t infringe those services’ terms and conditions of use.

I find it hard to understand how the kinds of things that Bidisha describes don’t do that.

It’s a dilemma, to be sure. Yet surely someone can apply some common sense to look at some people’s behaviours in social media likely to offend reasonable people wherever they are in whatever culture.

I know it’s not that simple. And I should probably have titled this post "The ugliness of people" as it is about people’s behaviours where social media are just channels.

Whatever, this is so ugly.

Rebooting Facebook

Posted on September 23, 2011 at 9:04 am UK

As more than 100,000 others did, I sat at a computer last evening to watch the live video stream of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg deliver his keynote speech at the start of f8, Facebook’s annual developer conference in San Francisco.

Over the course of almost an hour, Zuckerberg laid out his grand plan for the evolution of Facebook that intends to catapult the social networking site back into the mainstream of people’s online lives.

It’s the hotly-anticipated culmination of some radical changes to the service during the past week or so that have stimulated much commentary and opinion across the full emotional spectrum.

What Zuckerberg showed last night will undoubtedly do the same in the coming days.

So what is the rebooted Facebook? Zuckerberg showed four distinct areas of change in what the site will look like and what you can do there – a timeline that will be your new profile; a new way in how Facebook apps will behave and how you use them; integration of music, movies and more right into your social experience on Facebook; and evolving the concept of liking something into far more broader sharing of your activities (almost in the Twitter sense of ‘what are you doing right now?’)

Among the credible commentaries online already that attempt to explain all the new features, first reports by Mashable, Gizmodo and BBC Technology are worth reading.

It’s the timeline feature that has grabbed everyone’s attention right now. It’s quite a radical change in how you see your content in your Facebook account, and how you interact with it, presenting it to you in a continuous, well, timeline that can stretch as far back as when you were born, if there’s anything about you online that you’ve shared or your friends have. Note that such content will have always been in Facebook; now it’s more easily seen.

(Personally, I love the new timeline. As someone who hardly ever uses Facebook even though I’ve been there since April 2007, this feature may well reboot my own use of the social networking site.)

Everyone’s profiles will convert to this new format on September 29. If you want to experience it before then, TechCrunch explains how to make the conversion right now. I did that last night and the screenshot shows the result (which you can see in real time if you visit).

As with anything that changes the familiar, there’s plenty of user criticism already. Will it result in a mass exodus of disgruntled users, perhaps flocking to Google+? What will it do for business? How about music and movies – will the integration of services like Spotify and Netflix stimulate the music and movie market, perhaps at the expense of illegal file sharing? And what about Google+ and Twitter – where does rebooted Facebook leave them?

Terrific questions, among the ones that Shel Holtz and I plan to talk about in the next episode of our FIR podcast on Monday September 26. We’ll also discuss what you have to say about it, if you care to contribute a comment (if you’re an FIR listener, join us in the FIR Room on Friendfeed).

Finally, while watching Mark Zuckerberg last night, I sat with camera in hand taking snaps on what I was watching. Those 82 pics are in an album online (ironically, at Google+). I also made an Animoto video which I like doing – animated pics set to a music track which tells a story too. Take a look on YouTube and see what you think.

Facebook. Rebooted. Disruptive.

Related posts:

How to stay safe and secure on Facebook

Posted on August 21, 2011 at 11:23 am UK

Facebook has just published a handy guide to help you do all you can to stay safe and secure when you are online and using the social networking site.

Available on free download, the 14-page PDF entitled "A Guide to Facebook Security For Young Adults, Parents, and Educators" offers a wealth of common-sense and practical information and tips to help you understand what Facebook is doing to make the site
safe and secure and to take the actions that are needed to protect yourself and your account.

And, as Facebook says in the guide, you can apply what you learn for other places you use online as well:

[...] While the focus of this guide is on Facebook, the lessons here apply to every site you visit online. Throughout the guide, we will highlight the unique tools that Facebook provides so that you can harness your power by protecting your account, using advanced security settings, recovering a hacked Facebook account, and stopping imposters.

It’s a useful information resource that will help you however you use Facebook

Don’t think it’s only for personal users – if you’re a business user on Facebook, this is also for you.

Finally, while you’re downloading the PDF, check these common-sense "Top Tips for Staying Secure on Facebook" included in the guide:

Only Friend people you know.
Create a good password and use it only for Facebook.
Don’t share your password.
Change your password on a regular basis.
Share your personal information only with people and companies that need it.
Log into Facebook only ONCE each session. If it looks like Facebook is asking you to log in a second time, skip the links and directly type www.facebook.com into your browser address bar.
Use a one-time password when using someone else’s computer.
Log out of Facebook after using someone else’s computer.
Use secure browsing whenever possible.
Only download Apps from sites you trust.
Keep your anti-virus software updated.
Keep your browser and other applications up to date.
Don’t paste script (code) in your browser address bar.
Use browser add-ons like Web of Trust and Firefox’s NoScript to keep your account from being hijacked.
Beware of "goofy" posts from anyone – even Friends. If it looks like something your Friend wouldn’t post, don’t click on it.
Scammers might hack your Friends’ accounts and send links from their accounts. Beware of enticing links coming from your Friends.