The future of Facebook, a visual story of what the blue giant could become in the next 13 years is creatively turned into its own Timeline.

Some very interesting and probable predictions, others a little more out there, but for sure a fun infographic designed by the guys at Ph. Creative.

I specially like the idea of “Facebook Search” because it’s an aspect I believe represents the weakest link for the network.

Enjoy the 13-year ride on a Timeline infographic.

Click here to view the large version (do it).

Infographic courtesy of Ph.

I know what you’re thinking just by reading the headline of this post: Of course LinkedIn is better for B2B marketing and Facebook for B2C.

But wait, that is not necessarily the case. I have to admit I’m not as active on LinkedIn as I am on Facebook, or even Google+. That’s probably because my focus on this blog is to talk to entrepreneurs and small business.

But when it comes to approach Corporate America, I automatically think I need to get out of these networks and go to LinkedIn. Some of you probably don’t know I’m also a partner at Plural and Partners, a digital agency in Los Angeles and Chile that works with brands and big ad agencies.

Even though I have established Facebook connections with some individuals, when I want to connect with people about Plural, I’m not sure that I want to poke folks on their personal profiles, it feels like I’m coming to your family BBQ on Sunday to discuss business.

On the other hands, it feels to me that LinkedIn does not offer the same level of engagement. I heard people say they never check their messages or invites to connect. I have actually sent invites that were accepted 6 months later. By then, I don’t even know who you are anymore.

But how about results? How about learning a bit more about where my prospect is hanging out, or what kind of people should I approach on LinkedIn or on Facebook. That’s the objective for this infographic from Bop Design that starts by saying that conventional wisdom says LinkedIn is better if you play in the B2B league but…

And this is what I’m taking away from it. Of course I’d love to get your thoughts on this in the comment section:

• You should target individuals by their level, looks like top level execs are more likely to do “business” on LinkedIn while middle management use it to network and entry level are just looking for jobs
• Regardless of the numbers, I think I will follow my intuition on where to approach people
• Just because my target prospect spends more time on Facebook doesn’t mean I will add to the pile of invites, messages, likes, and other forms of digital pokes. Maybe a channel less congested will have more impact
• Does this mean I will scratch Facebook from my B2B marketing strategy? Of course not, you should not ignore Facebook at all

Infographic courtesy of Bop Design

You probably heard something about Path in the last month or so but the truth is, the social network has been getting love from early adopters and media since its launch over a year ago.

So how come you hear about it now? What do you need to know about Path? How does it play a role in your life? And very important, what not to do with it…

These are some of the things we’ll talk about today here, hopefully you’ll end up with a clear picture.

And, just so you don’t miss it, there is a poll at the end of the post, make sure you participate!

Why are you hearing so much about Path lately?

A couple of things have been going on for the social network, including:

A Shiny New Redesign

There’s no argument about this, Path was already one of the most beautiful mobile apps in the market but it just got better. Look at these screenshots:

New Features

Path launched its new version last month with a number of additions not just in the design but in its functionally giving the app a strong focus in what they call “smart journaling”.

Besides photos and videos, you can now share your thoughts, the music you’re listening to, where you are, who you’re with and when you start and finish your day. In other words, a digital journal on your mobile device.

Love from media

All this has resulted in some pretty wide media coverage including major venues such as USA Today. Publications like Business Insider have actually included it in the best apps of 2011 arena.

Where is Facebook’s Timeline standing in all this?

After Facebook announced its purchase of Gowalla to bring in the talent and kill the app, many started rumoring that the next in the list was Path. Think about it, it makes total sense looking at Facebook’s Timeline.

I even saw a couple of people commenting on this issue and saying that they will no longer use the app because it will soon be eaten by Facebook. Let’s see what happens.

What You Should Know About Path

Let’s now move on to the main things you need to know about the app, just to give you a kick start.

It’s a timeline

Path had the timeline concept already in place, it’s now been called “smart journal” and has had more features added but the important thing here is that you do get your content in a chronological order and the posts you create and share are called “Moments”.

Accessibility

The app is not accessible from your browser. The only way you can access Path is through an iPhone or Android devices. This brings up an important point for me since the network is supposed to be a connection with your loved ones, my mother, who makes it in the list of loved ones, does not own any of these devices.

Instagram-like photos

Path offers filters for taking pictures, just like Instagram does. Cool pictures + beautiful interface = Shiny.

Limited connections

Path allows you to have a max of 150 connections, the concept is based on Robin Dunbar’s theory that says human beings can maintain a total of 150 trusted relationships between friends and family. I know what you’re thinking now, we’ll come back to that.

People Tagging

It is very easy to tag people into moments. With location-based apps like Foursquare you can add pictures to your check-ins, with Path you can add pictures and also tag people. Now you have a “Moment” that includes a post with location, an image and the people you shared that moment with.

Number of users

Path was launched in November 2010 and it’s now passing the 1 million mark. Is it in the race to become your

Social Sharing

The network is private but you also have the option to share your moments with the rest of the world if you want to. Path let’s you connect with Facebook, Twitter and send your check-ins to Foursquare.

Emotions

Conversations are very light, you can express your mood in regards to a post with simple emoticons that works similar to the famous “Like” button, in this case adding the possibility to add a feeling/emotion. Other types of communications include comments.

Privacy

If you are one of those people that are concerned about privacy in your social profile you’ll like this. Path is private by default, you have to let in the people you want to connect with and you only have 150 spots available. Facebook for example is open by default and you need to adjust your settings to make it private.

How does Path play a role in your life

The concept of Facebook was to connect with your network, the people that you really know, that’s the reason the connection has to be mutual. I think we can agree that ship has sailed in most of our cases.

In the case of Google+ and Twitter the networking is open, you don’t need the other end to connect to you.

Path brings back the closed network concept, the fact that it limits you in the number of connections makes you want to make them special, true connections with the people you care about and have an interest in your personal life. This is not a network to grow your digital footprint or promote your blog content and it’s certainly not the network to establish new relationships.

Is it for everyone? not at all, starting with its limited accessibility. For example, If a good part of your close network moves more on a Blackberry environment, they’re automatically out of the equation.

What do you think?

There is one more thing you most be thinking, “why would I have another social network?”, even if Facebook is not very pretty you can still manage to keep a true small network of offline relationships or you can filter the information you share.

Here is a little Poll I created to see what your thoughts regarding this topic. Participate!

Also, if you want to share your thoughts about Path and how it plays a role for you, use the comment section.

This is a guestpost by Bradley Gauthier, a Digital Nomad.

As the social web becomes more important for online success, I’ve noticed a major flaw within Internet marketing:

Most online content marketers have it wrong.

Or at least partly wrong.

But before you storm off for the pitchforks and torches, let me explain through a quick story:

The Band Promoter

A few years ago, my roommate at the time was obsessed with a band. He owned all their albums and memorized the lyrics to every song.

When that band’s new CD came out, he let everyone know. Of the people he made listen to the tracks, they often would buy the album.

Of the people he simply told about the new album, they normally would give a warm smile and kindly tell him they’d check it out later. Some did. But most others clearly didn’t care whatsoever.

After watching him talk about this new CD for months I could tell he didn’t understand why people weren’t rushing to the record store on his verbal recommendation.

That was until he found out the band was coming to play in our city. With renewed vigor, he eagerly signed up to be a promoter.

A week later, (and much to my dismay), the main room was packed with signs, banners, and other marketing material the band’s record label sent him to help promote the concert. He was ecstatic!

After a day or two of covering the college campus with the concert signs, something remarkable happened. People who once could care less about that band became interested.

How did this happen?

Easy. The band relied on their marketing team to create buzz. Not my roommate.

My roommate was no salesperson, as witnessed from his futile attempts to get his friends to buy their album.

The record label assumed this. And they especially didn’t expect the fans to create effective flyers to fill the seats.

They gave their fans the marketing collateral necessary to become effective promoters.

Your Audience as Promoters

Now back to my bold statement about most online content marketers and how they have the system partly wrong.

The general wisdom is that by creating great, high-value content, it will be shared with others. But this logic is missing an essential piece of the promotion pie.

Effective content marketers, e.g. great bloggers, not only create high-value content that demands others to share it.

They assume the person sharing it is not a salesperson.

Optimizing for Social Sharing

Just as my old roommate couldn’t convince others to buy his favorite band’s album, you mustn’t assume your website’s visitor has any skills to promote your post beyond clicking share.

Instead, you must take control of how the tweet, +1, like, or share outputs on the user’s social network feed.

The more attractive the link looks on the social network, the more likely their friends and followers will click it.

But how do you do this?

It starts with understanding what happens when someone clicks a social network’s share button. (I’m assuming you have share buttons already installed on the page)

Depending on the social network, a few things are generically pulled from the backend of the web page: the title tag, the meta description, and an image.

Caveat: Specific social networks may require your site’s coding to include additional tweaks, I’ll mention them shortly.

Title Tag

No longer is the title tag only an SEO-thing. It’s now the main show of all social sharing.

The title tag is used by default for the clickable link of a Facebook share, a Google +1, a LinkedIn share, and pretty much every other social network. It’s even more important for Twitter, as their button uses only the title tag for the main text of the tweet.

Therefore, your title tag must be well thought out.

Don’t be cute. Be compelling.

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
~ David Ogilvy

Also, keep in mind most content management systems will automatically create the title tag from the headline. But if you use WordPress, I highly recommend you use an SEO plugin or a premium template with SEO features because you will have the ability to choose specifically what your title tag outputs.

For instance, some websites include a lot of excess information in their title tag such as the site name, tagline, blog post category, date, etc. which looks messy and cluttered when trying to share. But by only outputting an attractive headline, your sharers will be much more effective as promoters.

And one more thing about the title tag. The length from an SEO viewpoint must be less than 70 characters. This is a best practice. But there may come times when more characters are needed while optimizing for social sharing. If so, remember to place your targeted keywords early in the title tag for SEO purposes.

Meta Description

From an SEO perspective, the meta description is the details below the title tag in your search engine result.

But from a social sharing standpoint, the meta description is the additional information that shows up when someone shares the web page on most social networks.

Which means that by using the meta description wisely, you have space for a few more sentences to pull the reader into your content.

However, one important consideration to be aware of is Google’s search result page limits the length to 150 characters at most. But as I mentioned for the title tag, I wouldn’t let the limitation hold you back. Use whatever makes the link as enticing as possible while keeping the best stuff up front so searchers see it too.

Featured Image

A picture. Believe it or not, this is the best kept secret ingredient of great content marketers.

And will often make or break the success of a shared link in Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Reddit… the list goes on and on. Because except Twitter, almost all other social networks allow the sharer to include a picture.

With your link competing with hundreds of other status updates and posts in a person’s news feed, an amazing picture may be all that is needed to catch someone’s eye.

But the picture must be spectacular.

Therefore, when crafting your page or post, it’s an extremely valuable use of your time to search for the perfect picture.

And while you can always go buy some generic stock photo, my goto source for interesting photos is the Creative Commons search on Flickr.

There are some wonderful pictures on Flickr that only require attribution for their use.

However, if you have multiple images on the page, be sure to include this attractive picture on the top of the post. Mainly because the social network will often default to the first scanned picture of the page.

Specific Social Network Tweaks

Want even more control over what happens when someone shares your page?

Luckily, there are some great network specific tweaks to take into consideration.

Facebook

Facebook’s generic Like button on web pages isn’t very helpful. Because oftentimes it won’t pull additional information from the page, such as the picture. Which defeats the marketing purpose of selecting a great photo.

Therefore, when someone hits Like on your website, it shows up in that person’s news feed as a text link. Which is pretty boring and will rarely catch someone’s eye.

A quick fix to this problem is to use the Facebook Share button instead. Which is the exact same concept of copying the URL and pasting it in Facebook’s Update Status box.

But the Share button is no longer supported by Facebook.

Facebook instead tells developers to use the Like button with their Open Graph system.

The Open Graph Protocol is a set of coding that you install into the website to delegate what web page pieces goes where when someone hits the Like button.

Unfortunately, it’s much easier said than done. So you may need to hire a smart web dude to help you implement the code.

But once it is installed, your Facebook Likes will be extremely attractive and will gain much better traction on your audience’s News Feeds.

Twitter

Besides understanding that the title tag is most likely what will be used for the text when someone hits Tweet, there aren’t too many coding tricks.

But there is one thing to consider. If you are heavily reliant on Twitter for your marketing campaign, you can include Twitter-only mark-up, i.e. hashtags and @replies.

For instance, if your blog post is referencing a certain Twitter Chat, include the hashtag in you title tag. By doing so, whenever anyone shares the post, their Twitter followers will be exposed to the hashtag link. Magic!

Google+

Love it or hate it, we must consider Google+ a dominant player in the content sharing arena. But the nice thing is its sharing system is extremely similar to Facebook, meaning the web page includes the title, description, and an image.

However, while not as cumbersome as Facebook’s Open Graph, Google uses custom code to decide how the page will output when shared.

Called snippets, Google allows you to include specific images and content when someone clicks the +1 button.

Again, the installation of this may require a little external web coding help. But it’s worth it to ensure proper sharing output.

Others

You’ll drive yourself crazy if you worry about the hundreds of other social sharing services out there.

So unless you heavily rely on a certain social network for web traffic, by doing the above steps you’ll have the foundation set for most sites, such as LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc. because they take the default info from the website.

A Sea of Promoters

As you go forward with your content marketing, remember that my old roommate wasn’t a marketer, and neither are your readers.

You cannot rely on your Twitter followers to create a witty title when tweeting your post. Or assume they will include a wonderful introduction when sharing your website on Facebook.

By consciously attending to each portion of how your post will be displayed when someone hits share, you will gain much more traffic from your audience’s social networks. Good luck!

Bradley is Co-Founder of New Methods. A project to help entrepreneurs take the leap into 21st Century business. And he has launched a digital nomad blog teaching others how to create a lifestyle designed for travel. You can connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.

Photo Credit: marfis75

This is a guest post by Leo Widrich from BufferApp.

“Using 3^rd party Apps to post to Facebook decreases engagement by up to 70%.” This was one of the striking headlines a few weeks back that a study found.

And it was very understandable I believe. Facebook would not only collapse posts from the same App, but also decrease their visibility considerably. Another big issue was that a lot of “FB posts” from 3^rd party apps actually looked just like Tweets.

What I found is that this can easily turn off users from engaging with the content.

Yet, things changed dramatically in the past few weeks. As Mark Zuckerberg announced in a recent statement, Facebook doesn’t care about getting more users. They want to be a platform with a healthy app eco-system.

Given his words, I naturally assumed that changes would follow that would benefit app usage more than it used to. And fortunately changes followed.

1 - Facebook changes their Edgerank algorithm

The first and foremost reason is Facebook’s change of their Edgerank algorithm that happened literally a few weeks ago. Matt Trainer, one of Facebook’s developer consultants announced that:

“…we recently made a fix that added more signals to detect good quality posting behavior. This should improve the situation with the distribution of posts coming from third-party apps in the News Feed.”

This is a huge heads up for everyone using 3^rd party apps to post to their Facebook page. The biggest problem, namely that posts from Apps would be collected and then collapsed should now largely be solved.

This is also a very strong signal to embrace a Facebook App eco-system, similar to Twitter’s. Facebook always appeared more closed and possessive, yet this appears to change sharply.

2 - A smarter way to post to Facebook launches

Another great reason for you to give apps for posting to Facebook a go is the fact that Buffer just launched their Facebook version. This means that instead of timing posts individually to go out to your page or profile, you can drop them into your Buffer. From there, they will be posted for you at optimal times, well spaced out over the day.

As one of the key reasons that the app provides is picture and thumbnail preview. On top of this you are able to edit the preview text that comes next to the picture. Overall, the idea is to make the experience as personalised and focused on Facebook as possible.

3 - The Facebook subscribe Button changes the dynamics of posting frequency

Another point that I observed was that the recent introduction of the Facebook Subscribe button might change the dynamics of posting frequency considerably. Whilst before, posting at most once per day was an optimal posting frequency, this seems no longer to be the case.

This matters especially as Facebook’s Zuckerberg explained how posting and sharing is going to increase exponentially over time. In order to keep up with this trend, help from  Apps is mostly needed.

I feel that the subscribe button makes Facebook more open in general, showing certain resemblances to Twitter. Due to this, one can also expect that posting frequency will increase, given you can build a following that is not based on mutual friendship.

Personally, I left my personal account and page mostly dormant. Yet knowing that using 3^rd party Apps is no longer a danger I started to post much more frequently again.

It would be very interesting to hear what your experience has been with this. Have you seen a difference in the appearance of Facebook posts sent via apps in your stream? Have you tried posting via Apps to Facebook yourself yet?

Leo Widrich is the cofounder of BufferApp.com, a Twitter App that allows users to schedule tweets easier than other scheduling Apps you might know of. As he focuses on getting Buffer off the ground, Leo writes and gives Twitter Tips at blog.bufferapp.com. Leon loves to connect and build a relationship with new users. Don’t hesitate to say Hi.

Photo Credit: ansik

If you ever wonder what kind of content attracts more “Likes” on Facebook, this Infographic is going to give you an idea.

The data comes from a study conducted by Crowd Science and even tough it represents a small sample of 1,224 respondents, it will show you a couple of items I’m sure you were not expecting. Let’s first look at some of the interesting facts included and then we’ll look at the Infographic:

What users “Like”

• First, I find it interesting to see that videos get fewer “Likes” than other types such as images, wall posts and even comments
• Non-brand pages get 1% more “Likes” than branded pages
• To me is a little surprising to see that only 8% of Facebook users do not use the “Like” button, I was assuming that number to be a lot higher than that

What do you think? What kind of content do you “Like”? Do you follow brands online because you like them, to get promotions or enter sweepstakes? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

This Infographic is courtesy of Crowd Science. Photo credit: jonkpirateboy.

Just 2 months ago, we were discussing here how StumbleUpon passed Facebook as a traffic generator and how it represents more than 50% of the total social media traffic.

That had a lot of different reactions, most people agreed that while StumbleUpon can generate more hits than the other social sites, the quality of that traffic is much lower. Some people don’t like one traffic referral negatively affecting the overall numbers when they look at their analytics.

Today, StumbleUpon comes back with more of those interesting facts, this time through a beautiful infographic designed by Column Five. Let’s take a look at the possible takeaways here:

First, let’s get passed those stats that talk about how big the service really is, 2.2 million pages added every month, 51 pages per minute, and the chart about how much traffic each social site generates.

What happens after 24 hours?

• Twitter moves at a speed that no other social service can, that also means that the lifecycle of a link is very short, it dies almost immediately. If you pay attention to how many people retweets you after 24 hours of posting a link, you’ll notice this is rare.
• Facebook moves much slower and people share significantly fewer updates/links. You can still see some reshares and even comments on something you posted the day before.
• If you pay attention to your StumbleUpon counter, you’ll notice that it does not move much on the first day but it starts growing after that. In my own experience, I’ve seen posts grow faster in numbers after a few days.

Half-Life

The other interesting data in the infographic is the visualization of the half-life of a link. This is basically showing you how in 2.8 hours your link has already reached half of the engagement it will ever get on Twitter, in other words, at this point you pretty much know what’s the potential for the other half.

SU claims a link has barely reached half of its life cycle after 400 hours. That’s impressive.

What I’d like to take away from this

Is StumbleUpon better than Facebook or Twitter? No, it’s different. Should you take that traffic? Absolutely. I believe in getting the number of tools you use on the Internet to a bare minimum, specially when your real focus should be your three-dimensional business, but SU is very much still in the toolbox.

Credits: Infographic Source

This is a guestpost by Jim Belosic, CEO and co-founder of ShortStack

Companies are pushing their Facebook Pages like never before. No matter where you look – from online advertising and marketing to television and print ads, billboards, and even business cards – you’ll see “Find us on Facebook” or that iconic lower-case “f”. With Facebook’s 800 million users, it only makes sense for companies to place their products or services where they have the opportunity for so much exposure. And with sharing, commenting, and Liking, Facebook gives companies the power to reach more people than they ever could have with a traditional website. Since Facebook is getting so much love, what’s happening to traditional websites?

Less Attention From Companies

Increased emphasis on Facebook Pages means less emphasis on traditional websites. It’s trend that’s still on an upward swing as more and more companies realize the advantages of a strong social media presence.

Ford was one of the earliest companies to promote their Facebook Page. In advertisements, both online and in traditional media, they directed customers to checkout Ford on Facebook, not on Ford.com. At the time, it was an unheard of practice. Fast forward several years and most major companies have established their own Facebook presence and reaped the benefits. As the remaining companies play catch-up, there will be even more emphasis placed on Facebook Pages, and less on websites.

Users Are Looking For Social Interaction

People love being able to make online tasks that would otherwise be solitary, social. That’s why so many people are visiting businesses on Facebook, instead of at their old URLs. A snowboarder looking for new bindings can browse different manufacturer’s websites, but his options are pretty limited. He can look at the specs, choose a model, and make a purchase. But on Facebook, he can get opinions from his friends on the model he’s chosen. Their good or bad reviews of the product help him make an informed purchase. If there’s a problem with shipping or a defect in the product, the snowboard company’s Page is his access point to a company representative, and the first step toward getting the problem rectified. His process of purchasing a snowboard went from being simple and solitary to thorough and social.

Facebook And Website Synergy

Facebook Pages and traditional websites are being designed to better compliment each other. Each platform has it’s distinct strengths – there’s interaction on Facebook, and robust functionality on websites. Bigger companies have the convenience of hiring both community managers and web designers who are especially adept at recognizing the strengths of Facebook and websites, capitalizing on them the both. They design the two platforms to work together to give their users the content they expect on the platform they’re visiting. The resulting Facebook Page is engaging and social with an available company representative, while the website is highly functional with straightforward operation. The Facebook Page contains links to the website, and the website links visitors to the Facebook Page.

Websites Forced Into Social Media

In some cases, companies try to recreate their websites on Facebook. There’s heavy emphasis on static content, lots of information, and straightforward action, but since that’s not the content Facebook users are after, these pages largely go ignored. Meanwhile, the traditional website is reduced to a placeholder with nothing more than a couple links to the Facebook Page.

Facebook Pages Have Replaced Traditional Websites For Many Small Operations

For family businesses and artists and musicians, it’s easier – and cheaper – to focus their online efforts solely on Facebook. Custom tab applications are a great way for small business owners and artists to design tabs with a professional look and feel at a fraction of the cost of professional design services. Facebook – and a custom tab app – actually has a way of bridging the gap between the presence of big-budget corporations and local shops, putting businesses big and small side-by-side in the same arena.

Websites Remain King Of Functionality

Facebook has cornered the social media market, but websites are more useful for functions outside of social media ideology, and they’re still the platform used for performing straightforward tasks. Furthermore, there are websites like WebMD.com that could never be replicated on Facebook. There is so much information, so much functionality, and it’s such a big name, that WebMD.com will continue to be the online resource for health and wellness related content.

The Future Role Of Websites

Websites will always have a place, but they’ll continue to get less attention as businesses figure out more ways to bring their content to the people, which means we’ll continue to see traffic being directed en mass to the social networking giant at the expense of traditional websites.

This is a guestpost by Jim Belosic, CEO and co-founder of ShortStack, an easy-to-use Facebook platform-based application that gives businesses the power to create custom tabs for Facebook pages with content ranging from contests and promotions to products and videos.

Photo Credit: Goiaba

Well, the day was pretty much hijacked by Facebook in regards to anything related to the Internet and technology in general.

Facebook had its big announcement at the F8 Conference and as expected, it was huge whether you liked or not and we can argue about that the rest of the week. There are quite a few changes on the table and I suspect this stuff is already blowing up all over the blogosphere.

I thought about doing something different and instead of listing all the updates, I’m giving you the full image of what the new Facebook Timeline is going to look like. After all, this one image gives you a great idea of what’s going on.

Feel free to click on the image to see the full-size version.

Also, you can use the comment section below to share your thoughts or ask questions.

Click to see the full-size image.

What do you think? You like it? Start a conversation in the comments and share your comments…

It’s on! And I’m sitting in front of my monitor with a smile on my face…

Is Facebook afraid of Google’s shiny network? Is Google trying to ruin Facebook’s party at F8? It feels like this week is “all or nothing” for these two and nobody likes to lose, that’s for sure.

But to be honest with you, I don’t care about industry egos and that kind of stuff. While these guys battle for attention, what I care about is how the end-user gets the juicy benefits of competition. The same competition I was talking about a couple of months ago when I said that Google+ was good for the Facebook user, because they will start seeing their network stepping up to the plate to keep their business.

Looking at all these changes and big announcements flying around, I thought it could be fun to do a quick recap, compare them and share some thoughts. Of course it will be a lot cooler if you also express your thoughts at the end…

First I thought about doing this in a chronological order, you know, as events happened in the last couple of weeks but I decided to go with one item on each side. I hope you like it.

Here we go!

Google+ API Opens

While this might mean nothing to the end-user right now, it’s a big deal. It opens the door for developers all over the world to make awesome ideas happen.

Obviously not a surprise, if anything it’s exciting that it’s finally open.

Facebook New Lists 

We talked about this last week so if you are not familiar with its whole functionality you can read it here. To make it short, Facebook created its own “Circles” and named them “Lists”.

This will be rolled out as a transition automatically creating the lists for you and then you will have the option to reorganize.

This sounds like the right approach, the problem is that since this was not part of the core of the network, as it is for Google+, I’m not sure if launching it at this point makes a difference.

Google+ Search

While this might seem like something minor, adding the search functionality to Google+ is a feature users have been asking for. Besides, it makes a lot of sense, specially when Google is king of search. Right?

Now you can search for any topic and then filter your results by “Everything”, “People”, “Google+ Posts” and “Sparks”.

This is important. It will most likely point out how terrible Facebook Search (powered by Bing) is. It will not get the attention it deserves, specially in the middle of all the other announcements.

Facebook New Profile Subscribe Button

Facebook launches the new “Subscribe” button for personal profiles. Basically giving you the option of following people without having to friend them. Sounds like Twitter following concept? Hmm…

This is also something we discussed as few days ago here on SocialMouths so all I’m going to point is this: This is optional, when you don’t do something from the early stages and you have 750 million users, everything has to be optional.

Important: If you do decide to add the subscribe button, your subscribers will have access to see the updates you classify as “Public”.

Google+ Mobile Hangouts

This is a major update. “Hangouts”, which was launched on the platform right before Facebook announced its integration with Skype has taken video chats to a whole new level. Now Google is launching its mobile version, including the multi-user capabilities right on your mobile device.

But that’s not all, along with Mobile Hangouts, G+ rolls out “Hangouts On Air” so you can broadcast and integrates Google Docs, screen sharing, sketchpad and makes public the Hangouts API.

Game changer? I think so…

Facebook Redesigns the News Feed

Facebook just rolled out its redesigned News Feed. They just took the liberty to reorganize everything for you. The main point is to display whatever is considered “top stories”. They added a blue corner to indicate this. Then you get “Recent Stories” right below in the order they were published.

Relevant? Well, this type of changes are usually followed by thousands of users resisting the change.

Google+ Opens To The Public

In my personal opinion, it feels like it took a little too long to open and for a while it felt like it was losing its momentum. Of course with this storm of updates is back on everyone’s mouths.

Maybe they were just waiting to open up right before F8… Is this big news, it should. Let’s see how this develops and we continue to see that insane growth we saw earlier this year.

Is There More? What Do You Think?

More Buttons From Facebook

TechCrunch published 2 days ago that one of the things Facebook is preparing to announce on F8 is new buttons. Like we didn’t have enough buttons already… but this is not official yet.

Here is what TC had to say in the post (to make it short), “Facebook users will be able to click Read, Listened, Watched on content in their news feed. And soon, “Want” as well.”

Klout Integrates Google+

This is from a 3rd party and while it doesn’t add to the user experience on the site it certainly adds to the pile of related announcements.

Klout has just finished its Google+ integration and you can now connect it to your list of networks.

F8 – Developer Conference

Right now F8 is probably going on as you read this. F8, as they say on the site, the conference is for developers, entrepreneurs and innovators who are creating a more social web. You can tune in to watch live here or on the F8 Facebook page.

Pages?

Some of the question I got yesterday on my Facebook Page are about how Pages are going to be affected but there is no word from either side yet on what’s going on with this. This is one of the biggest concerns for entrepreneurs, brands and online marketers. We’ll see what happens.

So Who’s Winning? Or Better Yet… Who’s Offering YOU More?

You will have to answer this for yourself. Hopefully you want to share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

I’ll share with you what I think so far. I feel like the biggest updates so far are on Google’s side, while it was losing some momentum already, opening up to the public, search, Hangouts and making its API public certainly has more weight than Facebook’s announcements, however, the biggest social network in the world should have a big surprise to reveal today (Sep 22).

I agree with Ricardo Bueno as he commented last week on this blog that while he’s loving everything about G+, he will continue to be on Facebook since his community are there.

Let’s not forget this, while it feels like Facebook is trying to catch up on technology and features, the biggest catching up to do here is on Google’s side. G+ is still about 700+ million users shy…

Over To You

What side are you on? What are your thoughts on all this craziness going on this week? Where is all this going? Do you think G+ can give Facebook a run for its money now it is open? Wow, that’s a lot of questions, huh?

Finally, here is my G+ Profile if you want to circle me up.