A new study from Pew finds that for the most part, adults are kind to each other on social media sites. In fact, 85% of adults say that most of the people they come across on social media are rather kind; only 5% say that people are "mostly unkind," which would imply rude or mean. An additional 5% say that it's all situational. On the whole, adults have positive experiences on social networking sites. A total 68% of SNS users had an experience that "made them feel good about themselves," 61% said something on social networks "made them feel closer to another person." Of the generous and helpful variety, 39% of users said they saw acts of generosity and 36% said they see other user behaving in generous and helpful ways.

Not everything is peaches and cream, though.

There are some social media users who don't feel so happy-go-lucky. Not everyone experiences kind, helpful behavior on social networking sites. That would be about 18% of users; another 5% claim to never see any generosity or helpfulness at all.

Sometimes interactions on social networking sites have negative outcomes. Of the people surveyed by Pew, 26% of adults experienced negative outcomes. Of that percentage, 15% said bad experiences ended friendships, 12% resulted in a face-to-face argument or confrontation, 11% said those interactions caused family-related problems, 3% got into a physical fight with someone based on an interaction, and 3% got into trouble at work. About 13% of adult SNS users say that someone else acted rudely toward them in the past year.

Unless you live in a world that resembles the movie Young Adult, you probably don't think of yourself as an adolescent. On social networking sites, adults tend to be more positive and less negative than teenagers; 41% of SNS-using teens had at least one bad experiences versus 26% of SNS-using adults.

Dear White Guys, Please Read This

Pew points out that non-white people, women, parents and millennials are more likely to see content that offends them. Of that group, 42% of black SNS users and 33% of Hispanic SNS users frequently saw language, images or humor that they found offensive compared to 22% of white SNS users. Taking a look at this in terms of age, 34% of millennials (ages 18-34) found some material offensive, compared with only 17% of Gen-X users (ages 35-46). The survey doesn't even give the tiny percentage of Baby Boomers who felt offended by material on SNS sites. Additionally, 29% of women were offended versus 22% of men, and 29% of parents with small children found offensive material versus 24% of nonparents.

Who Did Pew Survey?

Pew surveyed 2,260 adults ages 18-and-up over the period of July 25-August 26, 2011. Of the people surveyed, 1,047 were SNS and Twitter users. The margin of error is plus-or-minus three percentage points. A total 64% of adults surveyed used social networking sites. 87% had a profile on Facebook, 14% on MySpace, 11% on Twitter, 10% on LinkedIn and 13% on other social networking sites.

Images courtesy Shutterstock.

Do your friends on social networks make you feel good about yourself? Share your experiences in the comments.

The mixing of social gaming and mobile payments, social network alternatives to Facebook, consumer cloud storage and apps that actually make you feel productive (read: not like you're just wasting more time online) came out on top as just a few of the most important startups of this year.

This year's top 10 startups list is a combination of companies that launched in 2011, and others that gained considerable attention. We chose these startups based on how they've changed or disrupted their niches and how they've influenced trends this year and for the year to come. They are listed in no particular order. Take a look after the jump.

By September 2011, Forbes reported that member numbers were up to 600,000 and sales were in the six-figure range. Shellhammer handpicks every product that is sold on the site. It doesn't rely on email blasts or fatigue-inducing daily deals. And unlike other flash sales sites, merchants who sell on Fab.com don't lose money on their products.

To make the e-commerce experience more social, Fab.com launched its Live Feed, which aggregates everything that the site's users are buying, liking, tweeting and sharing about on the Web. The new feature is opt-in, meaning that Fab users don't one day wake up and realize that everyone in their network knows their purchasing habits. As I said in my 2012 predictions post, this social networking-turned-flash sales site will continue to grow. Fab.com's only real competitor in the flash sales market is Gilt Groupe.

Dwolla: Mobile Payments That Act Like Cash

Dwolla sees itself more like Visa than a PayPal type of mobile payments solution, except it uses cash instead of credit. Its main competitor is Square, which offers Square Card Case, except that relies on a user's smartphone and the retailer's iPad cash registers. Dwolla is much simpler.

Users benefit from Dwolla's location and social features, and that it's basically digital cash rather than credit-based money. In that way, Dwolla acts like cash in your wallet, except it's digital and your wallet is your smartphone. And at the end of the day, Dwolla wants to partner with retailers to make this concept work. Its "Grid," which launched back in June, works like Facebook Connect for payments - a user's personal information is stored on Dwolla, not the merchant's servers. If a third-party app wants to connect to Dwolla, it has to first ask permission just like Facebook Connect. That's one way Dwolla makes users feel more in control of their accounts, which are also based entirely on cash. Dwolla transactions are 25 cents regardless of the amount unless it is under than $10, in which case it's completely free. PayPal, on the other hand, always charges 30 cents per transaction plus 2.9% of the transaction.

Zaarly: Mobile Local Commerce Comes To Your Neighborhood

Whereas EBay is entirely bidding based, Zaarly acts more like the local commerce facilitator. Zaarly users don't need to limit themselves to stuff, per se. They can also post about errands they need done and tasks they want someone else to do for them, from "delivering a candle" to "finding an indie music expert to make me feel cool again." The company raised $1 million in its seed round from investors such as Ashton Kutcher, Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit and Chicago's Lightbank, which also backed Groupon. In late October, it raised $14.1 million from Kleiner Perkins and Sands Capital Ventures, just to name a few.

BankSimple Finally Launches, Rebrands Itself As Just Plain "Simple"

While the "location optional" feel of BankSimple seemed great, in the wake of Occupy Wall Street and people transitioning back to local credit unions, the idea of putting all of your money into the cloud felt a bit less appealing. The service finally launched in late September, but raised concerns about the security and potential sale of customer data. In November, BankSimple rebranded to just "Simple" and officially opened for business. It is not actually a bank, but it does work with FDIC-insured banks that handle a user's money.

Instagram: The Web's Second-Biggest Mobile Social Network

Next page: The next five top startups of 2011

Path: If You're Serious About Not Being On Facebook

As Jon Mitchell wrote in his smartly titled post "Path, Timeline and Worship of the Self," the big difference between Path and Facebook Timeline is that Path is closed, though you can choose to syndicate your content to Facebook or Twitter. Some have said that Path is what Facebook should be, a space for real friends not thousands of Facebook "friends" that you've met twice. In the wake of social Web overload, could Path be the way to bring some balance to your socially networked life?

Pinterest: Start Pinning Pretty Pictures And Forget About Socializing

SCVNGR: The Gamification Of Location-Based Commerce

Evernote: How To Organize Your Life

Everything seemed to be going well for Evernote this year until the introduction of its Evernote Hello app, which is supposed to help users remember people they meet in real life by taking their picture. Unfortunately, it's only available for iOS and it assumes that the user is willing to hand over his or her phone to a stranger. ReadWriteWeb's Joe Brockmeier notes that this could be awesome, if "Evernote is using Hello as a prelude to acing contact management features into Evernote." If it does, this could be a great way to manage contacts. Even better, it could collaborate with LinkedIn's CardMuncher iPhone app to sync everything up. Next up, Evernote wants to conquer the world of "Read Later" apps; it just added its "Clearly" clean-reading extension to Firefox. We named Evernote one of the top 10 consumer Web products of 2011. It is certainly one to watch in 2012.

Dropbox: Consumer Cloud File Sharing At Its Best

Do you agree with our picks? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below.

If you haven't heard of GetGlue, don't worry. Here's how it works: After you've checked in to the entertainment you're experiencing, GetGlue tells you who else is thinking about it, how many times you've checked-in, where it is trending on the site and how many others are currently checked into it. It connects people around entertainment, a trend that is increasingly becoming more mainstream as social TV expands. GetGlue saw an 800% increase from the beginning of the year to September.

The conversation tab brings up friends and comments from fans that are also checked-in at the moment. Because users can keep up with conversations in real-time, this feature seems like it will become a natural part of social TV.

In this update, both GetGlue iPhone app and GetGlue.com now feature guides based on a user's own tastes, friends' activity and GetGlue community trends. These guides make recommendations tailored to the user's taste graph, focusing on shows, movies and music. In the redesign, GetGlue.com will now look more like the app.

One major site feature update to note on GetGlue.com is the check-in button, which is now located in the top navigation bar.

GetGlue users feel comfortable telling their friends what they're watching, listening to and reading whereas doing a similar thing on Facebook makes most feel uncomfortable.

Last year GetGlue partnered with entertainment companies such as HBO, Showtime, Fox and PBS, among others. Earlier this year, it hit the million user mark. In April, GetGlue received a record number of check-ins,which was right around the same time it improved its mobile app, added badges and more. And all this without instituting frictionless sharing.

GetGlue started off as a browser extension, later transforming into a semantic and social recommendation service combined with an emotionally charged space for discussion around popular shows and movies. Earlier this year, GetGlue made a shift toward location, adding geo-location sports check-ins and Foursquare integration.

Which brings me to my 2012 predictions for Facebook, e-commerce, location and social networks, the four areas I've been watching closely since I joined the rad team at ReadWriteWeb this past October. Come along to the next page!

In the context of the 2011 social network battle of 2011, Facebook lost in the Identity category (you can't use pseudonyms on Facebook). In the Sharing category, however, Facebook came out as the obvious winner.

At the f8 developers' conference this past September, Facebook announced the launch of new Timeline profiles, frictionless sharing, Spotify integration and its vision for Facebook's Open Graph platform. A few months after f8, Facebook hired the engineers and developers behind Gowalla. (As a result, Gowalla will shut down.)

What Will Happen In 2012? In short: A lot. Facebook is aggressively hiring and is expected to go public in 2012 with a ridiculously high $100 billion valuation. I predict that frictionless sharing will continue to ramp up, especially in the areas of news and video-sharing. With the expert Gowalla engineers and designers onboard, I can see Facebook tweaking its Timeline so it's better at actually telling stories rather than just presenting people with a ton of visual information. The news feed will probably become more customizable and personalized, giving users some of the control they demand. I think Facebook will converge its UIs into a single platform, and everything will be optimized for mobile. In fact, mobile will be Facebook's number one focus. The long-rumored Facebook phone will finally come out, but it will bomb. By the end of 2012, I predict that Facebook will hit the 1 billion user mark.

E-Commerce

In 2012, I predict that Groupon and LivingSocial will scale back on employees. Then it will increase the frequency and personalization of its deals. In fact, I predict that personalization and time-limited, location-based deals will be key for the future of daily deals.

Social networking-turned-flash sale sites like Fab.com will continue to grow.

The Facebook-EBay integration will be Facebook's last attempt at f-commerce before it finally gives up.

Digital customer loyalty programs like Belly will grow as merchants realize that they need a way to keep their customers coming back. In 2012, I predict that mobile commerce and couch commerce will explode.

Next page: What Will Happen To Location and Social Networks in 2012?

Location

Social Networks

I predict that Facebook, Google+ and Twitter will grow and thrive in 2012. Pinterest, a relative newcomer to the social network game (it actually bills itself as a social bookmarking site) will also keep expand. I also predict that we'll start seeing more visually focused, tablet-friendly user interfaces like Delicious'. People will increasingly access social networks from their mobile devices and tablets.

What do you think will happen in 2012? Do you agree or disagree with my predictions? Let me know in the comments below.

In the land of social TV sharing, people are communicating with friends in real-time (chatting, IM, tweeting) while they comment on the content they're watching. Eventually there may be a synchronization of sharing with video, which means users will be able to comment specifically on what they're watching when they're watching, check in to content and invite others to do the same, actually affect the outcome of a show as if it's a "Name Your Own Adventure" story, earn badges and other social rewards that revolve around the show and in fact build a new social network completely focused around content interests.

With the new YouTube re-design and the idea that YouTube may produce its own content, video and social just got one step closer to each other.

Social TV is about discovery. The report also mentions discovery as a major reason for why people use social networks. The StumbleUpon and Twitter redesigns make clear that the user interface of social is becoming more about discovery.

In the age of social discovery, users will be able to request recommendations based on their social graph (think Facebook, especially) or specific social circles on networks like Google+. Social TV will be curated by you and your friends. Of course, this runs into the wrong idea of conflating the social graph with the interest graph. You and your friends do not necessarily share the same interests, though you may share the same social graph. This aspect of social TV will need more tweaking if it is truly going to work - it cannot assume that people who are friends share all of the same interests.

For publishers, the idea of social TV is stellar. If it works, it would make finding target audiences that much easier. Everything is based around the social graph. And with targeted program comes more highly targeted advertising, like users are already seeing on Facebook.

The second screen trend, which we cited back in July, relies on users watching TV while concurrently using a tablet or smartphone. Twitter has embraced its social role in TV, making it a natural place to go if you want to post thoughts and feedback about something you're watching.

Rumors have circulated about Apple jumping into the social TV game. Will they launch the HDTV set sometime next year?

Readers, do you think there's a future for social TV? Give us your thoughts in the comments section.

Almost every Web product these days has some kind of social element. But to make this list, the product has to have social networking or community building as a core part of its offering. So without further ado, here are our top 10 Social Web products of 2011:

Up till 2011, Google wasn't known for its social networking prowess. Unless you count Orkut, a social network product that became a phenomenon...in Brazil only. At the end of June 2011 that all changed, with the worldwide launch of (in our opinion) the best social network product of the year: Google+.

It was a muddled launch. Back in March, ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick got the scoop about a new Google product based on a circles concept. At the time, Google vigorously denied the existence of such a product. But lo and behold, Google+ launched over three months later - and its core feature was indeed "circles." With circles you could better segment your friends, something that was a major pain point in Facebook.

Initially Google+ launched to a chorus of media outlets shouting "Facebook killer." However, it soon became apparent that Google+ was going to be most useful to Google as the social component of its entire online product suite: including Google search, Google Reader and YouTube. Although it's a more than useful standalone social network, too. Particularly for topic-focused discussions. Google+ has grown rapidly, attaining over 40 million users in a matter of months - although just how many are active is a contentious point.

2. Facebook

We selected Facebook as our Best BigCo of last year, due to astounding user growth. Facebook not only continued its impressive growth over 2011, but released a number of innovative new features. Some of those announcements were spurred on by the arrival of Google+. But the important thing is that not only did Facebook respond quickly, they changed things up with a radical new design and an entirely new form of sharing media.

The new profile design was termed Timeline and at time of writing it's still in developer only release. The new type of sharing was nicknamed "frictionless sharing" and enables users to automatically post what music they listen to, what they read, and more. It has been controversial, with many people uncomfortable with how much they are sharing. Whatever the eventual outcome of Facebook's new features, it's very encouraging to see that it hasn't stopped innovating - despite having by far the largest user base of any social network, with over 800 million active users.

3. Twitter

Twitter was overshadowed a bit this year by Facebook and Google+, but it remains a force to be reckoned with as a mainstream social network. In September, it announced it had 100 million active users. It also got closely integrated into Apple's iOS 5, which among other things enabled users to tweet directly from Apple apps like Camera, Maps, Photos and Safari.

Perhaps the feature that most epitomized Twitter's continued growth as a mainstream tool was its usage with TV. Not only do many users tweet while watching television, Twitter began to partner with TV networks. For example its partnership with popular TV show The X Factor, enabling users to tweet their votes.

4. Tumblr

Tumblr is another social media product to have experienced huge growth over 2011. During the past year, Tumblr has grown from just over 100 million visits per month to over 350 million now (according to Quantcast). Tumblr gets over 12.5 billion page views per month, over 8 times more than Wordpress.com. Although we should note that Wordpress.com still gets more visits and it too has grown a lot over 2011.

Just as important as the user growth, is how Tumblr has brought the curation of content to the mainstream. Plus it's having a big impact on journalism, with old and new media brands alike using Tumblr to provide curation to their readers.

5. reddit

The Web of course is not just about reaching a mainstream audience - as Facebook, Twitter and others in our list have done. There are tens of thousands of social networks that appeal to a niche audience. Reddit is one example, although it has also shown strong growth by diversifying from its core tech-focused audience. In September, reddit blogged that it had tripled in size over the previous 15 months: "Since last May, we've grown from 7 million monthly unique visitors to 21.5 million. Our pageviews have exploded 4x to a staggering 1.6 billion pages served per month."

Part of the reason for reddit's growth are "subreddits," which the company says is "the secret to reddit's growth." A subreddit, such as DoesAnybodyElse (a place for people to talk about their quirks), is "a class of online community, just like mailing lists, forums, and chatrooms are." There are thousands of subreddits and each is "a distinct community with its own purpose, standards, and readership."

It's worth mentioning StumbleUpon here too, another "social news" service that had strong growth this year.

Next Page: numbers 6-10 of the Top 10 Social Web Products of 2011...

6. SoundCloud

One of the talking points of Mary Meeker's presentation at Web 2.0 Summit in October was the future of sound. Meeker claimed that sound would soon be bigger than video on the Web. She name-checked a startup from Germany called SoundCloud, which enables people to create and share sounds. What brings SoundCloud to the top 10 Social Web list is its very active community. SoundCloud users upload, comment on and re-share audio with a level of engagement not too far behind YouTube (which it is often compared to).

SoundCloud has enjoyed exponential growth this year. It had about 7.5 million users as at October, with 5 million of those signing up over the past 12 months.

7. LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the leading business social network, has had a good year. Its user base increased by over 60% and revenue more than doubled.

Most impressively, LinkedIn has innovated with new product lines. Apply Through LinkedIn job applications and the recently launched Classmates are two examples. The latter is a data-driven tool targeted at students and recent graduates, its biggest growing demographic.

8. GetGlue

One of the key trends of 2011 has been so-called second screen apps - mobile apps that make watching television a less passive activity. GetGlue, a self-described "social network for entertainment," is tapping into this growing market. It enables you to "check-in" to watching TV shows and movies (you can also check-in to a great range of other activities, such as reading a book or viewing a web page).

As at September, GetGlue had over 1.5M users and a database of over 200M ratings, reviews and check-ins. [Disclosure: GetGlue founder Alex Iskold was a columnist at ReadWriteWeb from 2006-09]

9. Instagram

For a service that is only available on one platform (iOS) and doesn't even have a proper website, Instagram has experienced very good growth since launching in October 2010. The photo sharing service now has 13 million users.

Photo sharing apps are a dime a dozen these days, but Instagram has managed to keep ahead of the pack despite its limited resources and iOS-only focus. It's a simple app: you upload a photo, apply some funky effects to it, then share it with the community. In short, people love the app. It will be interesting to see if Instagram can continue growing in 2012. To do that it needs to launch an Android app soon, but in the meantime its API has gotten solid take-up. See also: 6 Effective Ways to Get More Instagram Followers.

10. Meetup

Social networking used to mean getting out and meeting people in the real world. At least one of this year's top 10 hasn't forgotten that! Meetup.com facilitates offline group meetings. While it got off to a shaky start in January, with a redesign that met with resistance, Meetup has impressed us this year for its ability to connect people in real life. We have used it ourselves, to organize local ReadWriteWeb meetups. It is a well used product among a wide variety of people - for example I belong to a book club that is organized through Meetup.com.

This year Meetup celebrated its 10th birthday. Co-founder and CEO Scott Heiferman sent out an email in September, explaining how Meetup was founded after 9/11 to try and get local communities doing more together. According to Heiferman, there are now more than 10 million Meetup users and 100,000 Meetup groups.

Honorable Mentions

As always, there isn't room for every product we would've liked to include. Here are some of the ones we considered, but which didn't make the top 10: Quora (Q&A service that got a lot of interest during the first half of 2011, but has since dropped out of the limelight); Foodspotting (fun app for food photos that gained a loyal following); Pinterest (next-gen Delicious, one to watch for 2012); Foursquare (it grew a lot, but we felt it didn't quite do enough this year on the social side - although it will likely pop up in one of our other 2011 Best Of lists).

There you have it, our ten picks for best Social Web products of 2011! Let us know if you disagree with any of our choices in the comments, or if we missed one of your favorites.

Are you always checking your Facebook page to see what your friends are doing?

Do you get the feeling you are missing out on something big when you choose to stay home rather than get all dolled up for a night out on the town?

"If you're honest, the things you miss out on don't always sound as amazing as other people say they are," says Sophia Dembling writing on Psychology Today's blog. She goes on to talk about how social media, like many things, is both the creator and the cure for FOMO.

Perhaps some of it is just envy. Just as in middle school, we want to be among the popular group, the trendsetters. This reminds me of the Morrissey video, We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful. (A modern musical version, perhaps, of this maxim by François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld: "In the misfortunes of our friends, we take no small pleasure.")

In our article asking about how often you are on Facebook, the number of people who check their Facebook pages hourly surprised me, meaning that it was too low an estimate.

In my experience, it is almost continuous monitoring for the 20-somethings that I know. It is now de rigueur to place your phones on the table when you go out to eat, so they can be available at a moment's notice. This indicates to me that someone would rather not be present, no matter where they are.

Back in the olden times when we didn't have cell phones, restaurants brought landline phones over to your table when you were expecting an important call. Only movie moguls did this, however.

So here are some suggestions. Close the laptop. Set your phone on vibrate. Go read a book and enjoy the solitude. Or go someplace new with a friend, and just focus on each other. Watch a movie and really focus on what is going on with it. Live in the moment and enjoy what you are doing. Even for just a few minutes each day.

Call it a FOMO break.

FOMO logo c/o KentDesign

The good news? This study predicts that restaurants will start using more social media in the next two years.

Currently, a total of 94% of social media-savvy individuals said they enjoyed going to restaurants compared to 88% of the general public. 51% of social media-savvy individuals and 48% of connected adults said restaurants were an essential part of their lifestyles.

In the meantime, here's a neat ReadWriteWeb guide for creating a great restaurant Facebook fan page.

Image via Maggie Hoffman.

Does your restaurant use social media to engage customers? Tell us about it in the comments.

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.

We've put in a request to Chitika for more information about the study's methodology, and we'll update the post when we learn more.

In the meantime, we at RWW can informally corroborate Chitika's findings that interest in Google Plus is on the wane. Our monthly referrals from there are down 38% since their peak, while Facebook referrals are up 67% and Twitter referrals up 51% over the same period.

As we reported last week, the +1 button isn't gaining much traction, either. Despite all the new features and responsiveness to user feedback, Google Plus just doesn't seem to be catching on. There's only so much time in a day for social networking, and this newcomer isn't converting many users.

We've reported some sneak previews of upcoming Google Plus features, like Google Voice integration and a Quora-like Q&A service. Maybe those will help Plus stand out.

Why aren't you using Google Plus?

Let's not get into whether Diaspora can take credit for features of Google Plus and Facebook. There are things about Diaspora that still are unique among its competitors. Not only is it open-source, it's decentralized and distributed. Users are encouraged to set up their own servers. But these are not features for normal human users. In that category, the social networking superpowers seem to have Diaspora cornered.

Circles and Aspects

Diaspora has been called the anti-Facebook for its strong privacy stance, and it had "aspects" before anyone knew about Google Plus and its circles. But Plus exists now, and Facebook is coming around to this whole "privacy" thing. And really, for Facebook, it was just an interface problem, anyway. Why does everybody forget that Facebook has had publishing to select friend lists for a really long time?

If Google Plus has taught us anything, it's that normal people don't feel like leaving the social networks where they already feel settled. Diaspora lets users post their updates to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, but it still wants to be a destination of its own. Now that all Diaspora's user-facing features are available in the dominant social networks, that looks like a tall order.

Social Networks are Sticky

Sometimes, Diaspora seems like it is only a dream; it's still in closed alpha, so nobody's home. It's real, though; I promise. I've had alpha access for about a year, although I've only convinced 10 of my friends to accept my invites. And some of them haven't added so much as a profile pic yet. And none of us, myself included, has posted more than once.

Social network inertia is real. Has Google Plus killed Facebook yet? No. Diaspora can take credit for Google Plus circles all it wants, but Google reached beta first. I'd be happy to show you more Diaspora screenshots, but it's really mostly white space and things that look like Google Plus.

Diaspora's Defense

Yosem Companys, Diaspora's chief evangelist, insists that we do need a new home on the social Web. "Facebook really was fun for a while there," he says. "People who showed up revealed and shared their authentic selves. ... Today, what we see is people using Facebook only to say the most innocuous personal things, to market their own services, or to forward content created by others. As a result, Facebook has become boring and even depressing. We still go there because it's part of our routine, and for fear of missing something, but it's like an old favorite TV show on its 8th season, when the original magic is gone."

That's anecdotal, though. I've been a Facebook user since 2005, and it got depressing for a while, but I think certain recent features, particularly the Groups overhaul, have made it as fun and fulfilling as ever in its current incarnation, if you can get over the ads. But that's all just opinion. The data, however, show that Facebook is absolutely crushing it as far as traffic, and it is offering new mobile extensions of its network into the real social world where people have fun. Diaspora use is a desk activity.

Regarding Google Plus, Companys hits the new kid on the block where it really hurts: the real names policy: "All kinds of people have good reasons to be inhibited by this policy, including people looking for work, women, people expressing views different from their parents', famous people, and pretty much anyone outside the mainstream of the community where they live." Diaspora has no such policy, and it offers progressive new ways for members to self-identify, such as an empty text field for gender.

But is this enough to convert the hundreds of millions of people who have already settled into social networking habits? Only if Companys' anecdotal evidence is true, and that remains to be seen.

Whither Diaspora?

Is there anything Diaspora can do? I think so, but it's a departure from it's current incarnation, which is an awful lot like Google Plus (or vice versa, or whatever). It's unrealistic to expect a mass exodus from one social network that works to another of which no one has ever heard. Diaspora's potential is in its ability to syndicate to our other services (currently Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr) while still allowing us to own our data. Companys notes that "our service already includes outbound syndication ... and it will include inbound syndication, too." So this use case sounds like it's in the cards.

If Diaspora is built as a publishing platform that lets us own our content and direct it to our existing networks - and especially if we can read from them, too - it would be an awesome, welcome tool that even Dave Winer could love. But if the launch of Google Plus wasn't splashy enough to start a mass Facebook exodus, a later launch of a service that looks the same is not going to do it.

What isn't working for you about the social Web? What would you like to see change?

I spent this past week with many of those teachers at the International Society for Technology in Education conference in Philadelphia, and when Google unveiled Google+ on Tuesday, most of us were otherwise preoccupied. But now that many of the early tech adopter teachers are getting their Google+ invites, the question on their minds is "How will this work for education?"

The first reaction among many educators is that Google+ could work well. As a post on the Apps User Group points out, there is a lot of potential with Google+: better student collaboration through Circles, opportunities for blended learning (a combination of offline and online instruction) with Hangouts, project research with Sparks, and easier school public relations with targeted photo-sharing, updates, and messaging.

Privacy: As Google's own description of the new social feature highlights, it may well be the granular level of privacy afforded by Google+ that is the key to making this a successful tool for schools. Although some educators do use Facebook or Twitter in the classroom, neither of these are ideal in a school setting. Privacy concerns continue to plague Facebook and Facebook users, and although the addition of Facebook Groups late last year did make it easier for educators to have "private" conversations with smaller groups, many schools and teachers have still been reluctant to "friend" students or use the social networking site for educational purposes. And while Twitter has been embraced by many educators - for both professional development and for back-channeling in the classroom - there's still that "always public" element of Twitter that makes many nervous.

True, Circles gives teachers and students better control over sharing and by extension could be the key to making many more comfortable with social networking. But sharing online isn't simply about weighing privacy concerns; it's also about sharing with the right people. Circles will allow what educational consultant Tom Barnett calls "targeted sharing," something that will be great for specific classes and topics.

Educational Hangouts: Sharing isn't just about pushing information out, of course. It's also about finding and hearing the right information and right people. And like most of the new users to Google+, it may be Hangouts that have educators most intrigued. Skype has become an incredibly popular tool to bring in guests to a classroom via video chat - so much so that Skype has launched a service to help match interested teachers and classrooms. But as those weighing a move to a Google Chromebook are quick to discover: Skype isn't a Web app. Hangouts, on the other hand, is, and many teachers are already talking about the possibility of not just face-to-face video conversation but the potential for integration of whiteboards, screen-sharing, Google Docs, and other collaborative tools.

Plus Minuses for Schools

These early reactions from educators echo what seems to be the general consensus about Google+: it's very cool. But there's a big gap between this initial excitement and more widespread adoption - particularly when it comes to schools.

Limited Field Trial: The most obvious obstacle right now to that adoption of Google+ for education is the limited nature of the field trial. The number of people using the service remains small, and as many of the educators there are early adopters - already active on Twitter, for example, already challenging their schools to be more proactive with technology integration - it's hard to gauge whether or not Google+ really will see wider usage.

Google Apps Integration: The second problem, of course, is that Google+ is not yet integrated with Google Apps accounts. To use Google+, you need a Google Profile, a feature not yet available with Google Apps for Education. However, a Google spokesperson assures me that that's coming soon and that "we're working to bring features in the Google+ project to Google Apps users in the future." Indeed, Google Enterprise's Dave Girouard posted enthusiastically on Google+ that "Can't wait to get Google+ out to some of our Apps for EDU schools!"

For its part, Google says that it wants to make sure to "get it right" in terms of the technology and in terms of the privacy controls before bringing Google+ to its Apps for Edu customers. Google could offer no timeline for that roll-out.

Web Filtering: Of course, Google's efforts are just part of the puzzle, and while Google+ may be a no-brainer for its Apps for Edu customers, there are still many schools which have been slow to adopt technology and have been quick to block all social networking sites on campus. Even Google's own YouTube is blocked at a lot of schools. While students name this one of the biggest obstacles in their use of technology at school, the schools claim they must do so to "protect the children."

Will schools block Google+? Or will the finely-tuned privacy controls it offers trump schools', parents', and politicians' concerns?

The early ed-tech adopters I've talked to seem excited about the possibilities for having a place where students and teachers alike can embrace "the social" and collaborate in the classroom, at home, across the school, and with others around the world. As it stands, those activities are now scattered across Twitter, Nings, and wikis. To have them under one Google roof is a big educational play. Will it be the one to help more schools realize the potential for social media and collaboration tools?

Want to save some personal history? Your old profile information, as well as your comments, pictures, messages, blogs and groups, can be extracted using the Friendster Exporter.

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Friendster Hires Senior Product Manager

Facebook Goes International: Sees Impressive Growth Rates in Africa and Asia

The Social Networking Faceoff

Social Networking: Time For A Silver Bullet

See the rest of our social networking archives

Friendster is not deleting accounts, it is just stripping them of rich information that is presumably more onerous to store than basic profile facts. In the Friendster help forum the company outlines how to use the Friendster Exporter.

"If you do not wish to keep all this history or information, then you do not need to do anything. Whether you use the Exporter or not, your Friendster account will not be deleted. Your list of friends will be preserved, along with your basic profile information. Your wallet and games details will also remain unchanged," the company wrote.

The Exporter tool will download your information as a .zip file or you can send your photos to Flickr, Photobucket or Multiply.

Friendster was acquired for $40 million in 2009 by MOL Global. The company is the owner of a payment service provider that powers mostly game payments in Southeast Asia. The move to more online gaming and entertainment makes more sense for MOL Global than archiving a stagnant social network.

Friendster was not a service whose idea was "ahead of its time." Friendster was just first. It was specifically of its time and, in retrospect to what has come afterward, not particularly refined. It was never a juggernaut even if it did have a substantial following. As one ReadWriteWeb reporter said this morning upon hearing the news; "Oh, that is sad. Wait, what was Friendster again?"

To date, we witness the mass adoption of social networks. Roughly every 10th citizen of this planet uses these services to communicate with others. For the satisfaction of human need like socialization and self-esteem, users visit these services - very often more than daily. In communication, regardless of online or offline, people put their privacies at risk for some benefit.

In the offline world, we learned since our childhood how to do this properly with respect to the culture we live in. We learned how physics of the world around us work: We know when spoken word is recorded or who can see us communicating with someone. For most given communication situations, we perceive a level of transparency by sensoring the surroundings to control the receivers for what we want to say.

To communicate in a social network, we intuitively try to adopt learned social norms from the offline to the online world. Unfortunately, the transparency and tools for control we need to maintain our privacy do not find equivalent counterparts there.

Compared to everyday communication offline, social networks bring a new party into play: the providers. The fact that providers can freely define their platforms' rules for communication is one reason for many of the problem areas highlighted in the following. Commercial providers run social networks as an ecosystem to generate content and knowledge. That is content about users and other things like locations or photos. From that content, knowledge can generated and monetized, such as to run targeted ads. This ecosystem must be ensured to remain attractive to its users. Otherwise, they would stop to revisit it.

However, Nielson found users to vary in heavy contributors, intermittent contributors and lurkers. This inequality holds more true the harder a feature is to handle. For instance, to found and populate a group is way harder to do than to like something, which requires a single click only. Hence, providers design their platforms' rules for information flow so that this rare, valuable content can be spread as broadly as possible. Any tool that chokes the flow of user content is counter-productive to this goal.

The users of a social network want to satisfy human needs. Therefore, we expose some of our personal information to, in return, receive a satisfaction. Like in the offline world, we need tools that provide us with transparency and control of the audience for our content. The problem is as simple as controversial: as users want to control the reach of their personal stuff, which is most likely a limiting need, providers want to spread user-generated content as wide as possible to keep up the heartbeat of their products.

In this three post series, I want to deal with the problem areas involved in this field. As highlighted in the below graphic, this post concentrates on the users' decision-making process as well as their behavior as to befriending other users and its consequences.

1: Privacy Balance and the Privacy Paradox

The privacy balance is something we control all of a sudden and both online and offline. As Alan Westin observed, every time we are communicating or in public, we make adjustments between our needs for solitude and companionship, intimacy and general social intercourse, anonymity and responsible participation in society, and reserve and disclosure. In the online world, examples for privacy balance can be found in e-commerce applications: users expose selected personal data, such as credit card details and our postal addresses, for the benefit of not having to leave their homes to shop goods.

The privacy paradox kicks in when the satisfaction of human needs, such as belonging, self-esteem and respect by others, gets involved. Research has shown that users who claimed to protect their privacies, at the same time acted against their stated concerns by switching off privacy preserving controls or massively exposing private information. We are distorted in our decision making process. Subconsciously, we trade off long-term privacy for short-term benefits.

2: Befriending Strangers

In most social networks, mutual access to personal information of two users is granted if they are befriended. So far so good; friendships can be considered a proper and intuitive means to control the reach of personal information and content. However, there are three drawbacks relevant here:

• Firstly, in most social networks friendships are not qualifiable. That means that we are able to control future information flow only in a binary way: either there is access granted, or not. There is nothing in between to, say, private stuff can be addressed to one group of friends, and business content to another. Even if a social network lets you group, tag or define lists of friends: do you actually use there features? Most don't.
• Secondly, trust in online systems has been shown to be of lesser perceived necessity than in face-to-face encounters, encouraging people to befriend strangers as a result of disembodiment and dissociation. The problem is missing feedback functions or a reminder that future information flow is received by these strangers.
• Thirdly, providers exploit the second point to encourage users to befriend others. By applying principles like game mechanics, they provide an easy way to collect friends and satisfy our need for self-esteem and social inclusion while at the same time paving ways for a broader future spreading of content.

How did you like the first two of nine problem areas we described here? Did you notice the problems and pitfalls by yourself? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Photo by rpongsaj