A pig in the sea and other social network gripes

[caption id="attachment_388" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Yes, it's a pig in the sea. Photo by Eric Cheng"][/caption]

Good day, here are two gripes from my morning browsing...

1) Photos on Google+ are sharing-un-friendly
Try to share a photo to Facebook (or wherever for that matter, a service that will try to extract data from the URL): No proper title (example: the author's name and/or part of the description), no description (photo caption), no image (the photo perhaps?!) can be matched (or is declared with proper meta tags)

2) Facebook really needs to learn about this amazing concept of people OPTING IN to new features... Got this in the mail today:

Hi Markos,

We're trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we'll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed.

You can turn individual emails back on and restore all your original settings at any time.

Thanks,
The Facebook team

It seems to me the a***** persona that media and that movie have attached to Zuckerberg is a) probably true b) has expanded to become a modus operandi in the company he created...

How social media can kill a brand in days

What’s perhaps most interesting here, is that the PMS campaign was actually a relaunch of a fairly similar campaign that had run in 2005. In that instance, the ads drew some negative response and complaints, but crucially this was before the widespread penetration of social media that we have today. In essence, the reaction around both campaigns was the same, but because of social media, the ad campaign this time around had to be pulled, because the company had to be seen to react to everything that was so publicly visible. Was this necessarily the right decision to make though?

Full article: How social media can kill a brand in days - TNW Social Media.

Google+ business profiles to include analytics & more

“You can expect to see a level of analytics and measurement that you’d typically find in Google products as well as a nuanced approach to how things are shared. It encourages and enhances conversation, it doesn’t just put things in the stream.”

More: Google+ business profiles to include analytics & more | VentureBeat.

Jesus Christ, learn what Netiquette is

Scene #1: A university researcher decides to do a survey on HR practices in the Greek market. He tracks down the contact e-mail addresses of 317 Greek companies.

Google+ vs Facebook: The xkcd test

Xkcd is one of my favorite comics, so sharing a good strip is part of my "sharing agenda". Facebook has traditionally a problem with xkcd.com pages.

Adventures in Google Apps Land

With the introduction of Google+ I made the attempt to re-organise my Google services under a new account also having my giannopoulos.net email on Google Apps. This lead to discovering two things

The most brilliant/evil feature in Google+

I'm exploring the world of Google+ and this option in the sharing window seems to be the best way for a social network to expand.

Google+ Statistics on SocialStatistics.com

You know when your product/service is catching on, when other people are starting to built on it, try to take advantage on it or make themselves more known by being the first on it. From the co-founder of TwitterCounter.com...

Google+ Statistics tracks the top 100 users on Google+. Just add yourself so we can start tracking your own Google+ statistics too. See how many people added you in their circles, your progression and where you rank in the list of popular Google+ users. And yes, that is the real Mark Zuckerberg at number 1.

More: Google+ Statistics on SocialStatistics.com.

Google+ Circles: Rethinking the way we share

I had a full article on the issue but the WordPress iPhone app decided to eat it, so here are some other people's articles instead

Adding OG Tags in Wordpress

I've been using the FB Connect plugin for allowing visitors to login on the blog. It adds the Open Graph tags that Facebook reads to determine how a page will be displayed on a Facebook stream when shared, but not all of them. The description and image tags are missing, plus there are not tags on the home page, only the posts. I've set out to change this.

Facebook, Google, and the war to lock you in

Facebook isn't necessarily the new Compuserve, and Google might not be angling to be the Hotel California of tech, but all of the big web giants seem intent on locking their users into experiencing a single-vendor web.
Facebook riled users this week by throttling their ability to export their Facebook friends' data for use with Google+ or other services, while Google dumped Twitter from its realtime search in favor of its own Google+. The web as an intersection of seemingly infinite networks threatens to become a limited patchwork of monopolized web experiences that only grudgingly talk with each other.

More: Facebook, Google, and the war to lock you in - The Register.

How Forbes turned $6.5 million into $20 billion

The web is getting ready for another bubble...

Forbes is reporting that Facebook’s Zuckerberg is now richer than the Google’s Sergey and Larry. How did that happen? By using the most naive form of financial extrapolation and calling it fact.

Here’s how the financial alchemy works: GSV Capital spent $6.5 million to buy 225,000 shares at ~$30/share. That amounts to buying about 0.01% of Facebook. They purchased these shares at a 40% premium over the last big valuation that put Facebook to be worth $50 billion.

So if you extrapolate that the premium paid for 0.01% of the company is the same premium someone else would pay for 100% of the company, you get that Facebook is now worth $70 billion.

More: Wizards of bullshit: How Forbes turned $6.5 million into $20 billion - (37signals)