Facebook competes with Google

Based on the article found on the CNN technology page it's easy to see that as the web further progresses, old and dominate web sites like Google can and will eventually receive great competition. Sometimes this competition, however, comes from an unlikely source. As social media like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter continues to take over the world wide web, newer ways to look at finding relevant web pages begins to take affect.

While there is a massive amount of data compiled by these social media sites, they are often not indexed and difficult to search for. Facebook is trying to create an efficient way to compile all of this data as well as tie it into everyday search querying like a typical search engine of today. This would ideally provide search relevant material that could also compare the query with your friends and what they are searching or friending at that moment.

Google is still being Google and looking for new ways to progress and stay ahead of the market. Currently they are talking of a deal with Twitter where Google would display Twitter results on their search engine like it already has Google Adwords. This article states that the place a user still spends most of his or her time is in their inbox, and Google already has this advantage over Facebook with its Gmail email system. However popular Facebook might seem, I still doubt they will be able to trump Google anytime soon.

14. Library of congress to archive tweets

Yes, I made It to blog 14. Is everyone on twitter? It seems only yesterday people were asking what is a tweet. Even the government believe that tweets should be saved for historical reasons. The library of congress plans to archive tweets. In total twitter users send more than 50 million tweets a day. There is approximately 104 million twitter users. Library congress states that they will not archive personal tweets but only the ones they consider scholarly and for research.

The library uses this opportunity to embrace the digital media. Library is trying to used updated forms of communication for research and historical purposes. Twitter CEO agreed to allow the archived files to be saved by congress. Twitter CEO is excited about the news.

So if you are on twitter just think your tweets could be saved forever in library of congress catalogs. A hundred years later people can for whatever reason view what you were talking about on twitter. Its going to be an expensive process but i don't see myself looking up old tweets at the library.

Indexing Tweeter Trail

No longer will your Tweets from Twitter be only seen by your followers and friends for just a few days or weeks. Google is now indexing all of peoples tweets in a big, searchable database. Recently Google has announced that it has a new search feature that lets users look at the entire history of tweets in anytime frame and in any subject. This new feature is set to debut in the next few days.

All you would have to do now is enter the search term and select the update option then with a click of a button you will find results of tweets on that search condition dating back to February 2010. And Google in working on progressing this date back feature to eventually get all of the past tweets dating back to the first one made on March 21, 2006.

Here is a example of the new feature

With this new Google made feature you can see all tweets on a specific day, month or even year with the handy graph that is displayed at the top of the page results. Google says that these features are pretty useful because you can see what people we talking about on a day of a major event or significant occurrence. But for those people who want to keep their privacy, you don't have to be included in this feature because you have the option of having your time line public or not.

There is a great comparison of social media is made in this article on Lifehacker . The article has a great breakdown of Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook. I kind of missed Google’s Buzz when it first came out. I found this article while looking it up. From what I’ve heard buzz is suppose to contend with Facebook, I haven’t had the chance to use it much.

I found it odd that the author chose to put only these three in the chart. The author mentions others explaining that they are “generally too niche to be compared in the same aspects and categories.” I would argue that buzz is too new to not have a niche and twitter isn’t really comparable to Facebook or Buzz at all.

This article had some really great comments. One comment had the above picture from this site. The picture includes a breakdown of more social media sites. One of the best questions brought up in was in a different comment by cal82, “… What about the most important factor: which network your network uses?” This has to be the number one reason to use a social media site. Are the people that you want to be social with using the site?

Buzz has a step up on this process by automatically including people that I follow in Google Reader. I use social media mainly for looking at and sharing interesting things, either from friends and family’s lives, or something someone else found on the internet. I use Facebook for most of this and Google Reader for the latter. However reader can be a little overwhelming if you don’t check it often enough and would like something that offers a little more filtering options. I’m going to have to see what direction Buzz goes, and how many people adopt it.

Google Buzz

Another idea by Google, this one is called Google Buzz. Today Google has released a new networking tool called Google Buzz, this tool allows the sharing of photos/images, videos and status updates using a new Gmail tab. These new features of Google Buzz will be on android based phones and with web based application; on the Iphone as well. This allows for real time updates to show up on a your Google Buzz feed. The new Google Buzz tab will show up on 1% of gmail account users starting today and the rest of Gmail account users will see the tab within the upcoming week.

Google Buzz boast 5 main features to try and make you change to their social network. First is that it blends in with Gmail. The Buzz tab will be next to your inbox label allowing you to see photos, videos and status updates. This feature also integrates the top 40 people you interact with on Gmail and Gchat and automatically adds them as friends. Second Feature is "Page Rank" for status updates. This features lets you like or dislike peoples update statuses and over time it determines whether to show the status update or not. The third feature is "Media gets Pulled IN" in that videos from Youtube and pictures from flickr and Picasa appear as thumbnails in Buzz. So when you click on a video or picture the thumnail plays/appear inline on your Buzz page. And you can also pull tweets from twitter into Buzz.

Google Buzz Demo

The Fourth feature is"Mobile Features", Google Buzz will appear as a mobile web application where you can make status updates by voice or geotag your post. Another interesting thing with this feature is that when your using Google mobile maps, buzz updates appear on the maps so that you can see and read location based updates. And you can also see any Buzz updates that have been made near your location. And the Last feature is "Public or Private", you can make your Buzz either public or private. Private updates can go just to your followers or a select group of people. The public updates are posted to your own Google profile and it is indexed in for Google search.

Social Netoworking Became Easier continue

I read a week ago in a blog from this class that facebook and twitter are incorporating services. Well interesting enough Microsoft has created earlier this year a product, which is “ Windows Live” that combines services from Facebook, Twitter Flickr, MySapce and many others into one page. Meaning that with one password to your windows suite page we would be able to check on all of the updates coming from these web socializing pages. This service should make social networking easier. The problem comes with the how secure it will be, since we will have only one password?
This new system uses, Mesh Operating Environment - software component that manages the synchronization relationships between devices and data. I believe that Windows Live does use APIs from the different participants. The Windows Live™ Contacts API is an HTTP-based service that enables developers to programmatically submit queries to, and retrieve results from, the Windows Live Contacts Address Book database service. In addition to a full contact management interface for a Windows Live user's address book, the Windows Live Contacts API provides a view to a subset of the Contact data for the purposes of sending Invitations. Each view and set of abilities is controlled by the owner of the data, namely the Windows Live user who maintains the address book through products and applications in Windows Live, such as Windows Live Hotmail® and Windows Live Messenger.
Easier
Interesting enough, while I was looking more information on Windows Live, I found that a part of the suite called Windows Live Spaces which is use for social networking, blogging, and photo sharing is using AJAX technology.

Facebook + Twitter

All of our talk about Web 2.0 in class the past few weeks has opened my eyes to how important it is for the user to have control of content on websites these days. Obviously, flourishing networks such as Facebook and Twitter are taking advantage of this new style of the Web, and so I thought it would be very appropriate and informative to discuss a method which allows the combination of the two!

One of the popular things Facebook incorporates into its services is the use of applications and other third party options. While the combination of Facebook with Twitter isn't quite a mashup, because it doesn't use the APIs from both services, it results in a similar outcome, which allows users to interact with both services at the same time. While Facebook makes it a rather simple process, the usability and inginuity of it makes for a very worthwhile application. Upon logging into your Facebook account, a quick search in the search box for "Twitter" will bring up the Facebook application for Twitter.




Upon viewing the application, Facebook provides a few basic details about Twitter and provides a link to add the application. When you click to add the application to your profile, a page of Twitter settings will appear which you can adjust to your preferences then finalize the process by clicking add. Facebook then needs your Twitter login information and then offers you the option to have Twitter update your Facebook status. This authorization to Facebook for your Twitter account not only connects the two, but allows you to only have to update your Twitter account, and your Facebook status will automatically be updated to the same thing.



This application is a great idea, and something very relavent to today's Web 2.0 type of structure. Twitter was very smart to develop an application like this, because it not only allows for easy integration between the two extremely popular Web services, but it also minimizes competition between the two. By combining uses between both services, Twitter doesn't need to try and compete with the strong Facebook presence in the industry, but can instead join in with them and work together to build up both companies.

Actual Usage: