Amazon is the number one Internet retailer on the Web, pulling in roughly $24.5 billion in 2009, or about 19.4% of all sales generated by the top 500 Internet retailers. It is the seventh most trafficked site on the Web, with about 73 million monthly visitors and over 540 million monthly visits. With nearly 23% of users’ time spent on social networking in 2010, it is now the number one activity on the Web – more than double the next most popular activity, Online Games. Facebook is by-far the largest social network with over 500 million registered users – more than double the next most popular network, Qzone, based in China. Facebook is also, logically, the second most trafficked site on the Web, with over 130 million monthly visitors.
Location-based services (LBS) have been gaining major steam over the last twelve months, both in usership and in publicity. The idea behind LBS is that users “check-in” to places around their city using their mobile device and friends within your network can see when and where you check-in. The value to the user is an increased connectivity with their close circle of friends. For example, if I’m walking around downtown, I can scroll through my list of friends, see if anyone is nearby, and pop in to have a coffee with them. It’s this idea of serendipity that really piques users’ interest. The LBS viral loop is that the service gets more useful and robust the more friends you have in your network; therefore, it’s in your best interest to recommend the service to as many of your friends as possible.
Facebook finally announced their location-based service, called Facebook Places, yesterday at a conference/launch-party at the Facebook Palo Alto headquarters. A couple quick highlights from the presenters:
In two weeks, the Facebook Gift Shop will be closing its virtual doors; a move that has some relieved, some surprised, and others excited. Many are relieved that they won’t be pestered with virtual (read: fake) gifts that Facebook suggests users purchase for their friends and which clutter everyone’s profiles. The move is also a [...]
Ready? Nothing. My Google Reader (I know, “why do you still use a Google Reader??” I like my Reader, chill out) has been inundated with chatter about the new Google social network, “Me,” that is supposed to rival Facebook, and, while it does seem like big news, really is not what I want to be reading about. Why is Google trying to make another foray into the social network biz?
With the World Cup in full swing, Twitter, being a truly global social network (by now, less than 50% of tweets are in English), has been adding in fun little tchotchkes into the stream including soccer balls when you tag tweets with #worldcup and flags when you use country hashtags. It’s a great way to [...]
About a month ago, Techcrunch announced that Facebook would be rolling out location-based checkin functionality for their mobile app, and that it would most likely be dubbed the “Places” tab. Geo-location is all the rage now, with Foursquare nearing 1 million checkins a day and Gowalla at a quarter million users, and while it’s no [...]
Initially, all the changes announced at the f8 Conference made me really excited. As the weeks go buy, though, I keep finding little things that irk me. Have we decided whether or not we’re migrating to the “Likes” on Facebook/the entire Internet, or if we’re still using “Fans” occasionally? We know why Facebook went with [...]
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing, as we all have, with the new Facebook social plug-ins across the Web, and I’ve come across a problem. It’s an organizational problem, and as some of you know, I have more than mild obsessive compulsive disorder, so the fact that I haven’t been able to find [...]
Yesterday, “Star Wars Day” for those of you not in-the-know (May the 4th Be With You), Twitter announced (thanks SocialTimes) the launch of a brilliant tool, dubbed Blackbird Pie, that allows bloggers and others to snag an html coded version of a single tweet. When you paste in the URL of the original tweet, Blackbird [...]
