Bill Gross is the founder of prolific business incubator Idealab and its Twitter app builder and buyer Ubermedia; he's wrangled with Twitter headquarters over access to the Twitter API and reportedly tried (unsuccessfully) to outbid Twitter to acquire leading desktop Twitter client Tweetdeck.
But can you guess what Gross is hot on now? Google Plus - the new Google social network launched late last month that's been stealing the hearts, minds and time of many Twitter power players. Today Gross wrote that he believes Plus may be the fastest social network in history to hit 1 million users and he predicts it will become the fastest network ever to hit 100 million. That's a bold prediction that if accurate could point to some serious social networking disruption.
Google's social networking service Google Plus is so new that it currently lacks a verification system for user accounts. This isn't a big deal for most users, of course, but it can be an issue when someone famous signs up, be it Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg or a Hollywood celebrity. Currently, there is not a Google-supported way for them to prove it's actually them.
But as early adopter Alyssa Milano found out, there's always Twitter. Milano has been tweeting her thoughts about Google Plus (cooler than Facebook, not as cool as Twitter), and even tweeted a direct link to her profile page. That will work for now, but it's clear that an official process will be needed soon, especially considering the number of "celebrity" accounts we've uncovered lately.
With the new social networking service Google+, Google introduced the concept of Circles to allow users more control over what content is shared with whom. Baby pictures? Family Circle. Thoughts about Google Plus? Well, everyone. But the idea that only some content is (or should be) public is foreign to me. The only thing I've ever cared about is being able to filter the stream on the receiving end. From Twitter lists to Facebook Groups, I've traditionally organized people in ways that make sense to me: Apple bloggers, analysts, VCs, locals, extended family, school friends, neighbors, etc.
With Google Plus, Google now has an interesting opportunity to make similar organizational choices for me, without any manual effort on my part. In other words, I'm ready for automatic Circles. Are you?
Zynga does games. That is the company's bread and butter. Zynga makes almost all of its money through Facebook. Facebook does not do privacy very well and often faces user backlash whenever privacy settings or options are changed. User backlash against Facebook is inherently bad for Zynga.
Zynga wants users to know that it cares about privacy despite what the Facebook mothership is doing. Hence, Zynga has released a new "game" designed to teach users all about how the social gaming company treats user information, where it is stored and how it is used. Say hello to PrivacyVille.
Facebook announced today that the company will launch group chat, video calling with Skype and a redesigned chat side bar to make communication on Facebook easy and powerful.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new features at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. This announcement follows up on Zuckerberg's portent of "something awesome" last week. Skype video chat will be fully embedded into the Facebook ecosystem with an extension that is designed to make it as easy to use as possible. Essentially, video chat within Facebook is two clicks away.
Late last week when Google Plus began opening up to more and more users, the leaders of the project said they were doing their best to include speakers of more than 40 different languages around the world. How geographically distributed were these first users? I thought I'd ask, on Google Plus itself, just where people were. Users posted their locations and a few short words of feedback on the service, from 2AM PST to 8AM PST July 1st when we hit the 500 comment limit on Plus.
Above, a map made with the help of data visualization guy friend of RWW Michael J. Rubillo. You can click on any of the places on the map and see peoples' reactions, when they posted one. It's just a snapshot, of course, but I think it does communicate two things: Plus is being tested all around the world and most people were feeling very positive about it, at least at the end of last week.
As a company, Zynga has made a big bet on the concept of "play." Now, the company is asking for investors to buy into their concept of play as well.
The social gaming company filed for an initial public offering today, which makes it the fourth major Web 2.0 company to travel down the IPO road this year. It follows LinkedIn and Pandora (both now trading) and Groupon (currently in the "quiet period" after filing earlier in June).
In case you hadn't noticed, spam and phishing attacks through the social networks has been on the rise. Security company Symantec released a report yesterday detailing socially-engineered attacks to determine where they are coming from and what techniques malware criminals are using to lure victims into their traps.
One of the most interesting trends that Symantec has noticed is that social spam and phishing has been cyclical, moving from network to network (see above graph). For instance, attacks will focus on Facebook for a period of time before falling off, then focus on Twitter or YouTube before coming back to Facebook. In the cat-and-mouse game that is malware verse security, these trends make sense as exploits are closed on one network and found another.
With the launch of Google Plus, there may be some confusion as to how the photos uploaded to the social network (Google+) integrate with Google's online photo-sharing service (Picasa), especially in terms of storage limits. The answer provides some great news for Google Plus users - nearly everything you upload to Google Plus won't count towards your storage limits on Picasa, with the only exception being videos longer than 15 minutes.
And there's another nifty feature involving photo-tagging, too - your Google+ friends can now tag your Picasa photos.
How do we know that Google Plus has really made it? It has its own Facebook page! On this new page, called "Google Plus Help, Tips and Tricks," liked by a whopping 36 people so far, you can discover links to blog posts and other "tips" shared by Google Plus fans.
But mostly, it's being used to beg for invites.
