Teenagers are considering spending less time on Facebook than they did before "annoyances" like the news ticker popped up, according to a new report from NYC-based agency Mr Youth. The report surveyed 2,000 teens nationwide ages 14-17.
As budding social creatures, teens value Facebook for the same reasons the original Facebook users did: visiting friends' profiles, commenting on friends' walls, and chatting. 47% said they'll continue using it as they did before, but only 4% said they will increase the time they spend there and 10% said they would leave Facebook all together.
In a rare appearance by engineering SVP Vic Gundotra himself, today's Google Plus update video introduces real-time search and actual hashtag support. "We're trying to make it easier to follow and contribute to live events on Google+, including breaking news, sporting events, and many others," Gundotra says.
Google Plus search results now update instantly, and hashtags are now clickable, taking you to the search result for that term. Google Plus got its own search capabilities last month when the service opened to the public.
Today location-based social network Foursquare announced Radar, a new real-time feature that sends users notifications when they're close to a place on their to-do lists, or the any other Foursquare lists they follow. It also notifies users if their friends are getting together nearby.
Everloop, the social network for kids ages 8-13, recently launched EverText, the first-ever 24/7 moderated SMS feature available on all mobile phones and major carriers.
Kids will now be able to use Everloop directly from their mobile phones by texting status updates to the network. Parents can moderate the number of texts a kid can use by selecting a monthly limit, ranging from unlimited to 250 texts per month. Everloop automatically sets the limit at 100. Once the child reaches their limit, parents will receive a note.
Those of us who are still playing with Google Plus are eagerly awaiting its further integration into other Google services (in ways other than the red box in the top right corner). The updates are coming slowly but surely; Google Docs is now integrated with Hangouts, Google Maps can be shared as posts, and Plus posts are starting to appear in Google Web search.
But Google Plus is built around sharing, and one of Google's best sharing services is missing: Google Reader. It's the free RSS reader that lets anyone subscribe to any website's feed, and it's behind some of the most popular RSS client apps, like Feedly. But there's no built in way to share articles from Google Reader with your circles on Plus. Fortunately, you can make one pretty easily. Here's how.
Two-year-old social network enhancing service Friend.ly has been acquired by Facebook, announced the Friend.ly blog earlier today.
Friend.ly is a place where people can get to know each other based on random questions you might have in common. Answer a question posed by the service, and you'll be able to see how other people have answered that question. You can also search for a question by typing it into the site's search bar.
So, are you ready to get even more friend.ly with Facebook?
Google Plus has been, by some accounts, the fastest growing social network in history. New numbers indicate, though, that traffic to the site is dropping fast after initial interest. Personally, I find myself more drawn to it every day, because I get so many responses when I post things there. (Disclosure: that could be in part because Google recommended me as a user there, meaning I have twice as many social connections there already as I have on Twitter.)
Many people say they don't find it compelling though. We asked on Twitter and on Facebook and most people said that the value proposition was too unclear, that it wasn't valuable enough to warrant the investment of time relative to the already heavy burden of Twitter and Facebook engagement. Google knows it needs to make changes to the service to increase its user retention. But you know who else has always struggled with new user retention? Twitter! Below, some Tweets articulating some of the reasons people aren't finding themselves Plussing.
Remember when Google Plus traffic went up 1269% in one week? Well, you can scratch that. New traffic data from analytics firm Chitika show that the insurgent social network has erased those gains entirely.
Google Plus opened to the public on September 20, leading to the huge spike in interest that we reported, peaking around two days later. But just in the four days that followed, traffic sunk back down to where it was.
Television shows that are widely discussed on social networks like Facebook and Twitter also have a tendency to have higher ratings than other shows, new data from Nielsen and NM Incite reveals.
The fact that people tweet about TV shows and chat about them on Facebook and Google Plus is hardly breaking news, but this is among the first hard data that demonstrates a correlation between that social chatter and actual, real-world viewership. This is especially true among younger viewers, the report points out.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader in exile, has joined Google Plus, and he's hosting a live Hangout tomorrow with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The conversation is part of the inaugural Desmond Tutu Peace Lecture in Cape Town, South Africa. It's an On Air Hangout, so there's no limit to the number of viewers.
The Hangout will be held tomorrow (Saturday, October 8) at 10:30 a.m. South African time (GMT +2:00). Unfortunately for U.S. readers, that's 4:30 a.m. Eastern, 1:30 a.m. Pacific. Google SVP Vic Gundotra says the video will be available shortly thereafter. You can follow the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Google Plus.
