In the area of Mark Zuckerberg talking about Google+, we haven’t really had a lot of work with. A couple of weeks ago, Zuckerberg told Charlie Rose that Google was building “it’s own little Facebook.” Google’s Bradley Horowitz later fired back that they were “delighted to be underestimated.” Hardcore, right? This type of intense combat can only happen in the high-stakes world of social media.

Now, we get another soundbite from Zuckerberg on Google+. This one comes from a BBC profile that aired on Sunday, where Facebook’s CEO was asked if he sees Google+ as a threat. Here’s the response:

Yeah Google’s a great company and I think we want to look at and learn from everything that they do. But at the same time, people have shared a lot on Facebook and have already told a lot of their life story on Facebook. And we think that we have by far better tools for doing that.

In that short answer, Zuckerberg outlines the main reason why Google+ would fight an almost impossibly uphill battle in directly challenging Facebook on pure, standalone social grounds: Facebook is just too engrained in everything that people do online. It’s been on the block for so long that it’s nearly impossible for people to disconnect their online (and sometimes real-life) presence from the site. Google+ is undeniably late to the party.

But of course, Google is not even trying to topple the mighty giant, if you listen to Google. They have been hammering home the “Google+ is Google” mantra for the past few months. The aforementioned Horowitz recently said that “Google+ is not a siloed product. It is not divorced from the rest of Google, instead it is a new way of using all the Google services that you know and love.”

Or think of it this way: Google says they don’t want Google+ to be a standalone site – just somewhere you go to be on a social network.

“It is a platform which allows us to bring social elements into all the services and products that we offer. So you have seen YouTube come into Google+; you’ve seen Google+ with ‘direct connect’ go into our search business. We are trying to make sure we use social signals across all of our products… It’s not just about getting people together on one site and calling it a social network,” said CBO Nikesh Arora earlier this month.

Google might have a different strategy for Google+ than simply replacing Facebook, but when you think about how much influence Google yields over the web, you can’t imagine that Mark Zuckerberg lets their social initiative stray too far from his mind.

[We previously had the entire interview embedded from YouTube, but it has since been yanked due to copyright claims from the BBC. Those of you in the UK can watch it on the BBC site]

Using email data collected from nearly 1.5 million non-distribution list emails from 1,052 managers of a “typical professional services company that offers various forms of consulting to services and clients,” Wuchty and Uzzi were able to distinguish that variables such as response time and even quick assessments of emails reflected self-reported ties of “real life” social networks. Further, the study demonstrates that, despite what curmudgeons may drone on and on about, electronic communication really hasn’t changed the way we interact with each other at all.

Of key importance is the understanding that e-communication mirrors patterns of face-to-face communication in regard to different types of relationships while the availability of electronic communication channels drastically reduced communication costs and extended our potential number of and reach to contacts, the email dynamics we observed suggests that fundamental patterns of friendship and professional connections continue to operation in their classical fashion. How these dynamics aggregate to change human dynamics is putatively dependent on the contextual basis of our findings.

Another telling observation to come from this research is that, similar to the study that Facebook conducted, email reveals approximately a similar degree of separation between participants in the study:

Pretty fascinating stuff, given all the recent decries that email is outdated or, worse, dead.

Much was made about the “cool” factor of Facebook as it was founded. Is it still cool today? Share your thoughts.

Now, it’s more like 800 million (a new report says Facebook had 721 million active users earlier this year). The valuation is much higher than reported at the end of the film. That number escapes me at the moment, and I don’t have the movie in front of me, but I know it’s ridiculously higher now. Recent estimates had it exceeding $80 billion.

Advertising

As the story goes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hesitant to put ads on Facebook when it was getting started. He wanted to see it what it could become first. He didn’t want it to lose that “cool” factor, which was also helped by its initial exclusivity to students of certain universities. A lot has changed since those days. Now, there are not only ads, but a huge ad platform that lets advertisers target people based on their likes and interests. And with “Sponsored Stories,” something you may have “liked” months ago could show up next to one of your friends’ news feeds as a “sponsored story”. For example, my colleague Josh told me he saw a sponsored story last night telling him that I like “Bing.” These stories are now much more in your face.

But that’s business. Facebook needs to monetize this enormous group of people it has, and that’s what it’s doing. I can hardly knock them for that. But not everyone understands or cares. Why do you think ad blockers are so popular?

Too Many Friends?

According to Facebook, there are 69 billion friendships among their active users. See the four degrees of Facebook.

According to a poll from Poll Position, 14% of Facebook users think they have too many Facebook friends, compared to 9% who said they want more (granted, the rest are ok with the number they currently have).

Too many friends can breed information overload. And if you’re friends with everyone you’ve ever known, there’s a good chance some of them are annoying you – especially if they invite you to a lot of apps and games.

There was even a National Unfriend Day created.

Shopping and Bill Pay

According to Gartner Research (as depicted in this infographic from MoonToast (via AllFacebook), companies will generate 50% of web sales via their social presence and mobile apps. It stands to reason that Facebook will be a major factor in that social presence.

However, The Street recently reported on a survey from BillingViews, finding that 87% of people would not be comfortable buying something through Facebook. On top of that, 94% said they wouldn’t pay a bill through Facebook. Security was cited as a main concern.

Sharing

Molly Wood at CNET put out a popular article the other day that’s generated a great deal of discussion. It’s called “How Facebook is ruining Sharing”. She says, “The slow spread of Facebook’s Open Graph scheme is totally ruining sharing. Here’s an excerpt, which basically sums up her point:

If your friends are using an app like The Guardian or The Washington Post’s new Social Reader, you’ll get an intercept asking you to authorize the original site’s app so that you can read the story. And, of course, so that every story you read will start being shared automatically on Facebook, thanks to the magic of Open Graph!

Now, it’s tempting to blame your friends for installing or using these apps in the first place, and the publications like the Post that are developing them and insisting you view their stories that way. But don’t be distracted. Facebook is to blame here. These apps and their auto-sharing (and intercepts) are all part of the Open Graph master plan.

You’ve no doubt seen plenty of complaints about the “frictionless sharing” that comes with an app like Spotify, where users can essentially spam their friends’ tickers with every song they listen to. There are ways to avoid this, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying to those who find it so. Keep in mind, that this “frictionless sharing” thing is really just getting started. The Timeline hasn’t even been rolled out yet.

Privacy

Privacy has long been a concern with Facebook for many users, though it’s hardly kept the social network from gaining momentum. After the last f8, when Facebook launched the new Open Graph, more concerns followed.

The Poynter Institute said Facebook and news organizations are pushing the boundaries of online privacy and that “Facebook again my have gone too far in its quest to make privacy obsolete and that this time some news organizations could get burned by going along with it.”

Poynter Digital Media Fellow Jeff Sonderman called out new Facebook apps like the Washington Post’s Social Reader, and similar offerings from The Guardian and The Daily, as well as Yahoo News, which has readers sign up to have their reading activity streamed to their Facebook profile.

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore talked about this in another article saying that he saw on Facebook that someone he knows professionally was reading articles with titles like: “Heather Morris on Breast Implants,” and “Perrey Reeves Shows Off Bikini Body (PHOTO).”

It’s not that these things are so bad, it’s just a matter of do you want everybody you know to know everything you read?

And there’s that whole tracking thing.

Take This Lollipop had a fun look at Facebook privacy:

Recent reports indicate that Facebook is close to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that would at least keep Facebook from making privacy-related changes that you have to opt-out, and would instead make it so users had to opt in for the changes to take effect.

Spam

Farmville requests and invites to events you’ll never attend are one thing. Getting spammed by your friends’ music listening is another. And getting pornographic images and pictures of dismemberments in your news feed is another still. Last week, there was a highly publicized attack on Facebook which spawned such images, and proved that Facebook is not invincible to such a thing.

Design

Facebook has had many design changes over the years, and usually when there’s a major overhaul, a lot of people are infuriated. That was no different with the last big change, which altered the way the news feed worked and added the ticker. Some people liked it from the start, and others have no doubt grown to accept it, but a lot of people miss the old Facebook, or other older incarnations. Design changes are a natural part of the evolution of any site, but when Facebook does a redesign, it has enormous ramifications for people’s perception of the site, because it has so many users, and it’s where so many spend such a large amount of their time online. Facebook gets points either way for bringing back the News Feed option to view by most recent.

Android

Facebook is pissing off Android users by not giving its Android app the attention it deserves. Facebook’s Android app is buggy at best. The company recently launched a new and improve iOS app, while leaving the Android app largely untouched. It doesn’t have the design or features of its iPhone counterpart, and it’s pretty bad about notifications.

This is a problem. According to Google, 200 million Android devices have been activated worldwide. I wonder how many of those people use Facebook. They’re also adding 550,000 new devices each day, Google also said.

Wrapping Up

I’ll be the first to admit that Facebook has changed the world, and has done a lot of amazing things. No company is perfect, and one can’t help but be impressed by the tremendous growth Facebook has seen in users, functionality and valuation. It really is astounding. They’ve forced other major Internet players to try and compete with them.

That, however, is one reason Facebook can’t afford to alienate users. While Facebook may still be the biggest social network on the block (by far), others aren’t backing down. Twitter seems to be gaining hipness with the youngsters, and is getting better and better, while being largely embraced by all facets of media. Google has a massive empire of users across its product list, and is integrating Google+ into all of those products.

Is Facebook becoming less cool? Tell us what you think.

Do you use Google+ regularly? We’d love to know.

While the fact of declaring it “dead” is debatable, there are some definite signs that should cause Google to be concerned. For instance, Dan Reimold, the Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Tampa, wrote a post entitled “Google+: Social Media Upstart ‘Worse Than a Ghost Town,’” in which he not only called the social network dead, but he also gave a bleak prediction:

“At worst, in the coming months, it will literally fade away to nothing or exist as Internet plankton,” he wrote. “At best, it will be to social networking what Microsoft’s Bing is to online search: perfectly adequate; fun to stumble onto once in awhile; and completely irrelevant to the mainstream web.”

In an interview with WebProNews not long ago, Reimold told us that he came to this conclusion after he realized that he wasn’t finding anything on Google+ that was more interesting or different from the information he was already finding on his other social networks.

Also, a chart released by Michael DeGusta showing the inactivity of Google’s own management on Google+ has done nothing but add to this negative outlook. However, since this chart was released, Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, has begun to use the service.

The biggest blow for Google and its social network was probably last week when Steve Yegge, one of its own software engineers, accidentally published a not-so-flattering post about Google+ on the network itself. In the post, Yegge essentially pointed out what his employer was doing wrong with Google+, making statements such as:

“Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it.”

And this: “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.”

Yegge’s post was intended to only go out to his Google circle but was instead shared publicly.

More recently, data analytics firm Chitika released some research that gives Google yet another reason to be concerned. The company looked at Google+ before and after its public launch in late September. Even though Experian Hitwise reported that Google+ grew 1269 percent in the week following its public launch, Chitika’s data shows this surge was only temporary.

Gabe Donnini, an analyst with Chitika, explained to us that the traffic to Google+ grew to peak levels immediately after the public launch but then fell over 60 percent shortly after.

“We just looked at the stats to investigate this trend, and as it turned out, there was a sharp spike and then a sharp decline almost immediately after the days following Google+’s public beta,” he said.

Donnini told us that he believed the traffic spike was driven by the publicity surrounding the public launch. However, Chitika decided to investigate further and extend the research period beyond the week after Google+ opened publicly. What it found was that the downward trend actually got worse. According to its research, the largest drop in traffic for Google+ was more than 70 percent.

Last week in Google’s Q3 earnings report, CEO Larry Page proudly said that Google+ had surpassed 40 million users.

“Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark,” he said. “People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!”

This is a large number especially considering that the network has only existed for a few months. But, as Chitika data shows, it doesn’t mean that all these users are active.

According to Donnini, the lack of activity from users is due to many reasons. First of all, users can’t import or sync their existing networks into their Google+ network.

“There’s very little incentive to share if you don’t have anyone to share with,” he said.

He also believes that users are inactive because it took Google a long time to make its API available to developers. As he explained, a large part of the success of social networks is due to the network of services that are built on the overall platform.

“By not providing a developer API in which a useful network of services could be built for their users, Google basically made it much harder for their users to find a way to (a) stay on the site, and (b) they kind of lowered the utility of Google+ as a site for their new userbase,” he said.

He also pointed out, “They don’t need to become Facebook, they need to become what Facebook is going to become.”

Interestingly, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Google+ czar Vic Gundotra spoke about the social network at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday. Both indicated they were pleased with the progress of Google+, and Brin even said, “I’m not a social person myself… [but] Google+, I instantly found compelling.”

Gundotra also said that Google+ would allow support in the near future for pseudonyms as well as for Google Apps users to be able to log into Google+ with their accounts. He also indicated that brand pages would be coming too, but not as quickly as the other features.

Are these additions enough to save Google+?

Should Facebook be worried about Google+ or vice versa? Let us know your opinion in the comments.

That start-up faces a much larger hill to climb in generating a brand and an audience. Google has a built in audience, and it’s enormous. It has a brand that has been turned into a verb. And that was years ago (though it’s still used very frequently).

So while Facebook may not be in any immediate danger, and Google+ may or may not ever become half the size of Facebook, it’s smart of Facebook to look at what is working with Google+ that some people might like better when comparing to Facebook’s user experience. That’s what Facebook is doing. They did (and continue to do) the same thing with Twitter, and Facebook still reigns supreme in social media.

The latest change is subtle, but noteworthy. They have locked the top navigation bar at the top of the screen, so as you scroll down the page, it is always visible. That means you can always see your notifications and the search box.

Google is also testing locking its navigation. It’s already live on image search, and probably just a matter of time before it’s across Google properties. If you use Google+, this navigation bar contains a link to your Google+ profile and a status update box. That means you’re never too far away from Google+ while you’re using Google.

In Facebook’s case, the sticky navigation bar could increase engagement with the notification counter always visible. Interestingly, it also keeps the search box visible. This could also increase engagement, but if Facebook does more with search, as it has often been speculated that they will (especially now that they’re in such heavy competition with Google), search is always right there. This could potentially make Facebook a greater threat to Google in the search realm. Facebook already taps Bing for its web search results, and Bing is already growing its market share little by little.

Americans alone already (collectively) spend a century on Facebook in a month’s time.

Interestingly, the sticky Facebook navigation bar doesn’t keep the publishers box for posting status updates at the top at all times.

Other things Facebook has done lately that are kind of Google+-esque:

• Circles-like sharing. Last month, Facebook announced new sharing features that make it easier to share things with the people you actually want to share them with. This has been one of the things that people have found most appealing about Google+’s Circles.
• New friend list options. Just this week, Facebook announced some new options for friends lists, which is really kind of an extension of that last feature. Also like Circles, it’s a way to separate your friends.
• Subscriptions. Also this week, Facebook also announced subscriptions for profiles that share information publicly. Basically, it’s just a way to follow people without them having to follow you back. Twitter has done this for years, but it seem to have taken Google+’s arrival to get Facebook to offer similar functionality.

There have also been other random signs that Facebook is a little worried about Google+. For example, remember when Facebook blocked that Google+ user’s ad? Facebook has also been stingy about Google+ users getting their FB contacts into Google+.

The point is, in the few short months since Google+ launched, Facebook has rushed to do things that make the two services more alike. To be fair, Google+ (without question) borrowed plenty from Facebook to begin with, but the differences between the two seem to be getting less and less.

That is one major reason why Google+ itself faces a tremendous uphill battle. Facebook is giving users less reasons to like Google+ better. And Facebook already has all of the users. Meanwhile, Google+ gets to keep trying to convince people that it’s the place to be as opposed to Facebook.

Google did finally launch the first Google+ API, which should help in making Google+ more useful as third-party apps are able to build around it.

On the other hand, Google Buzz has APIs too.

It’s not as if Facebook and Google+ can’t co-exist, but Google has put a lot of time and resources in to making Google+ the best Facebook competitor it can be. Will it all be worth it?

Who should be more concerned about its rival’s recent moves: Facebook or Google? Tell us what you think.

The feature appears to have been first spotted by Nick Starr, who tweeted the following screen shot:

Update: Mashable has some additional screenshots of some broader friend-flitering testing.

The extent of the testing is unclear, and this may or may not become a mainstream feature, but it kind of seems like another way Facebook is encouraging users to use Facebook in a way that has made Google+ appealing to its users – the separation of friends.

Of course, it’s not like Facebook didn’t let you separate people before. Google’s version was hardly a new idea. Facebook has had lists and groups both for some time, but this appears to be more a pre-made set of likely lists that users would want to use, without the user having to make the effort of setting them up.

The real appeal of Google’s Circles as it launched was the ease of the Circle-specific sharing functionality. It’s easy to know who you’re sharing a post with at any time. Apparently recognizing this as a good idea, it didn’t take Facebook too long to implement similar controls.

It’s not as if Google+’s entire interface wasn’t influenced by Facebook though, so it seems pretty fair. Maybe by the time it’s all said and done, Facebook and Google+ will be exactly the same.

Facebook has also been reaching into the Twitter idea pool again lately as well. Check out the recent iOS app changes.

Now, while I’m not sure how that would convert in relation to pageviews,but we’ll just go with this: For those of you who think a billion pageviews is impressive; and it is, it’s nothing compared to one trillion pageviews, which, if we go by Schwartz’ standard, is ten thousand times larger than the petty one billion’s worth.

And that, folks, is the amount of pageviews Facebook has received since coming online, the most of any site listed in Google’s “The 1000 most-visited sites on the web” list. At the top, with that gaudily impressive trillion count–here’s what it looks like in numeric form: 1,000,000,000,000–is Mark “I’m NOT Jesse Eisenberg” Zuckerberg’s social networking creation.

For those of you who are uncomfortable with such a claim, especially when you consider Facebook’s acknowledge membership count has not surpassed one billion members yet, a post from Digital Inspiration has you in mind:

Officially, Facebook has 750+ million users but the number of unique visitors who flock Facebook every month is much higher because certain sections of the site – Facebook Pages and Profiles for example – are open to non-users as well.

A perfect example of this is AT&T’s Facebook page. Granted, it’s not a personal page, but even without being signed in, you can at least view AT&T “Like this page” invitation. Upon “liking” AT&T, users then “get access to everything AT&T.”

How that’s accomplished through a mere social network site, I’m not sure, but the offer’s out there. Of course, you could also point out that you have to be a Facebook member to “like” AT&T’s page, but the fact is, you can still see at least one part of their content if you are not.

Interaction or not, this, too, counts as a pageview in Facebook’s incredibly large pageviews coffer. Here’s a look at the rest of Google’s top ten sites in regards to pageviews, and there should really be no surprises:

Click for larger image

Keep in mind that the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don’t have publicly visible content or don’t load properly, and certain Google sites.

Based on the listed results, it’s safe to say the actual Google.com site was one of the omissions. With that in mind, do you think Google.com has more or less pageviews than Facebook’s mighty trillion mark?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

What should Facebook acquire to maintain its edge? Tell us what you think.

Acquisitions

A new report out from Bloomberg says that Facebook is planning to make about 20 acquisitions this year, which would be twice as many as last year. This isn’t a rumor. It’s straight from Facebook’s director of corporate development Vaughan Smith.

The company has already made 13 acquisitions this year, according to Bloomberg. These include: Mac app maker Sofa, mobile app creator Snaptu, group chat company Beluga, mobile ad company Rel8tion, and iPad app maker Push Pop Press. Such acquisitions are line with Facebook’s plans to focus on design and mobile, as Smith indicated in the report.

Beyond Acquisitions

There is a lot more to maintaining a solid user experience and keeping people engaged than just piling on the acquisitions. It’s what is done with the acquisitions, and what features are added (or kept or removed) that keep people around. It’s also partnerships and the developer ecosystem that make things interesting, fun or worthwhile.

This week, Miramax announced a new Facebook app that could very well pave the way for the future of movie-based entertainment on the social network. Other movie studios have experimented with Facebook movie rental, but Miramax, working directly with Facebook itself has come up with a whole new concept for this, including plans for purchasing and digital storage.

Facebook is also expected to get more music-oriented with the help of a handful of partners. The recent U.S. launch of the popular Spotify may play a critical role in that.

While Facebook faces plenty of obstacles on the competition front, it’s also facing others on the legal front. And I’m not talking about the Winklevii or Paul Ceglia. The “like” button has essentially been outlawed in Germany. But that’s a whole other story.

The Google Threat

A couple months back, Google unveiled what might turn out to be Facebook’s biggest rival to its core business of social networking. Though there have been reports of slowing growth, initial growth of the service has been huge compared to rivals Facebook and Twitter for the amount of time it’s been out, and it’s still in invitation-only mode. But yeah, yeah, yeah…we’ve talked about all of this plenty of times before.

What we haven’t talked about quite as much is Google’s launch of games for Google+. Games keep a large amount of Facebook’s users engaged, and there’s no reason not to assume they will have a similar effect on Google+ users as well – especially considering that Google+ has the popular Angry Birds, and a handful of games from Zynga – the maker of some of the most popular titles on Facebook.

You also have to keep in mind that Google’s only going to keep integrating facets of Google+ with other Facets of the overall Google experience, which has a whole lot more users than Google+ itself. For example, Google+ posts are coming to Gmail:

Google also started adding Google+ posts to Google search results. On top of that, Google profiles (the backbone of any user’s Google+ account) are only going to continue to be more visible in the search results. Think about how many people use Google search. Google is pushing its authorship markup to webmasters and content producers (a future ranking signal, by the way). When this is used, authors of content show up with little images in the search results that stand out. When these are clicked, they go to that author’s Google profile. Expect to see more and more of these as more people adopt this markup.

Google also started including a Google+ hangouts feature right on YouTube video pages. Think about how many people watch videos on YouTube. Ok, don’t even think about it. Just look at these numbers from comScore:

Now think about how often people share YouTube videos. This feature lets people not only share the videos but watch them together.

These are just a handful of some of the more recent things Google has been doing with Google+. Nevermind that they’re pushing to make Google TV more appealing to consumers and are in the running for an acquisition of Hulu (think about the possibilities).

Oh, and Google’s not too shy about acquisitions either. You may recall recent news of the proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Facebook is putting more focus on mobile?

The Twitter Threat

Long before Google+ was even conceived of, there was another Facebook rival in town that went by the name of Twitter. While it has built its popularity up over the years, it was not until the return of co-founder Jack Dorsey earlier this year that the company really started kicking things up a notch.

One of the most significant things that has happened since then is Twitter’s addition of its own photo sharing feature. Then another major development occurred just this week, as the company announced user image galleries, which give people a place to simply go and look at all of a user’s pictures.

If you think about Facebook or Google+, this seems like a basic feature of a successful social network. Photos are a big part of the experience. Yet, Twitter has managed to be as successful as it is without this kind of functionality.

Now that users will have this kind of functionality, they will get a new dimension to their Twitter experience, and many will likely engage more with the service. As discussed in a recent article, it seems like the young are trending toward more Twitter use (and for some of them, perhaps a little less Facebook). I would not be surprised to see this new functionality continue to fuel that.

Twitter has also given webmasters and businesses more reason to maintain a good Twitter presence. Twitter referrals are now easier to track in analytics. All links over 20 characters are wrapped in Twitter’s t.co URL shotener, whether they are posted on Twitter.com or any Twitter client. As a result, analytics programs will recognize URLs as coming from t.co as opposed to TweetDeck, or some other client (hat tip to TheNextWeb on that one).

Another major, major thing Twitter has going for it is that it will be heavily integrated into iOS 5, the operating system that will power Apple’s iPhones and iPads when its launched this fall. From Apple:

iOS 5 makes it even easier to tweet from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Sign in once in Settings, and suddenly you can tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, or Maps. Want to mention or @reply to a friend? Contacts applies your friends’ Twitter usernames and profile pictures. So you can start typing a name and iOS 5 does the rest. You can even add a location to any tweet, no matter which app you’re tweeting from.

Right now, Facebook is still king.

While it’s true that Facebook does face growing competition for social networking eyeballs, it’s not in any immediate danger of losing a substantial amount of its user base. Millions of people are still using Facebook every single day and often throughout the day. Considering that, webmasters and businesses should consider some other recent developments.

How about this infographic from KISSmetrics, which looks at the timing of Facebook posts:

If you have Facebook apps, it’s worth noting that Facebook last week put out its guidelines for social design, which are worth a perusal.

Facebook has been filtering the news feed (even when sorted by most recent, without the user actually hiding people), and they’re expected to launch an unfiltered version. The ticker concept has already been spotted numerous times in testing. This shows posts roll in in realtime on the right side of the screen separate from the news feed itself. The point is, you may soon find that the visibility of your updates will go up dramatically.

In the news feed itself, Facebook has already been grouping posts by topics. If two or more of your friends mention a certain brand in a post, that brand will get some special treatment in the news feed. More on that here.

It’s also worth noting just how much traffic the search engines are sending to Facebook Pages. Search Engine Land looks at a study from PageLever indicating that 27% of referral traffic to Facebook Pages comes from Google. I wonder how much more we’ll see those Google profiles stand out in Google results, especially once the brand pages roll out. Will that take away from brands’ Facebook page traffic (which means Facebook’s traffic)?

Is Facebook in danger of losing its social network dominance? Tell us what you think.

Not quite. Turns out Google had just opened it up for an hour or so and I got lucky. But the fact remains, I was one of the chosen.

Now, as more and more of my friends join and swear off Facebook for good, I find myself in a pensive mood.

Actually, I just came across something from a few days ago that got me thinking. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner made some comments about Google+, most of them dismissing the new social network as an unwanted addition to an already full party. Apparently, he thinks that there is no vacancy in the social media hotel.

“Nobody has any free time,” he said. Facebook is for friends, Twitter is for short messages and LinkedIn is for business. “Unlike social platforms and TV, which can coexist, you don’t see people using Twitter while they’re using Facebook, or using Facebook while they’re using LinkedIn.”

With all do respect to Mr. Weiner, that’s an atrocious load of crap.

I, for one, frequently use Facebook and Twitter. My tweets are cross posted on Facebook – so that I can receive feedback on both sites. Not only am I quite active in both Facebook and Twitter, but I’m trying to beef up my Google+ activity as well.

Although I believe that it is entirely possible for Google+ to coexist with the other social networks, Weiner’s comments got me thinking: Am I forcing it with Google+?

While posting to Facebook and Twitter feels so natural, an integral part of my daily life, am I trying too hard to integrate Google+ into that routine – knowing that it feels superfluous? I like Google+, in some ways more than Facebook. But for an early Facebook adopter (2004), can Google+ ever feel as natural?

That long-winded introduction brings me to this: a brief discussion of things I like and dislike about Google+, now that the initial firestorm has cleared.

I am still undecided about the entire circles concept.  When I first encountered them, I was optimistic.  I even mentioned that to me, circles felt like a natural, fluid way to categorize people in your life.  And I still believe that to some extent, but the sharing with circles is tedious in my opinion.  While I am well aware that this complaint is the ultimate #firstworldproblem, it bothers me nonetheless:  The practice of having to click multiple circles with which to share my posts is oftentimes a burden.

In a related note about circles, some people dominate my stream. Erick Schonfeld posted on Google+ today about how Robert Scoble posts so much that he needs his own circle. This is a solution for weeding out the super-noisy people who flood your stream.

The problem is that I find myself in the Facebook mindset where I want a comprehensive stream that includes all of my friends. I don’t want my collaborative Google+ stream to be missing anyone because I will rarely remember to click on their specific circle to view an entire separate stream of just their posts.

On a positive note, I’ve had a whole lot of fun naming my circles. It would be improper to go into the names of some of those circles, as they are a tad uncouth. But just know that I’ve been creative.

I like the Google+ interface. I think it is basic, clean and easy to navigate. This is so important when it comes to using it via the web. I am also a fan of the iPhone app that just dropped. Sure, it could be spiced up a little bit but the functionality is there.

I also love the ability to share actual text posts, not just videos or links that people post – like on Facebook. Being able to do this sparks interaction and promotes comments. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Facebook eventually allows this as well.

I’m not really using the Hangout or Sparks features. This is not to say that I don’t like the Hangouts. I think that they are simple, fun and a great option when you want to chat with multiple people at once. I also really dig that YouTube watching feature within Hangouts.

If you regularly use those features, this point doesn’t really apply. But for me (and I’m sure many others), I am using Google+ to post videos, links, and statuses. If that sounds familiar, that’s because that is exactly how everyone uses Facebook.

And as of right now, Google+ doesn’t do that any better than Facebook. So for a person using Google+ primarily for that reason, I find myself wondering why I should post to Google+ instead of Facebook. This might not be a conscious debate that I have in my head every time that I have something to share, but it does feel like my default still lies with Facebook and Twitter – to an overwhelming degree.

Sure, my experience with Google+ is still in its infancy, but I wonder: Am I already too connected with Facebook and Twitter? Could they ever cease to be my defaults?

Google+ has a long way to grow. It’s still in a beta test, remember? Once it truly integrates all over the other Google properties into the network, that might be a game changer. The world that Google+ might end up being best suited for is that of business (once business pages are completely hashed out).

Sure, Google+ can coexist with other social networks. But for many children of the Facebook revolution, can Google+ ever compete on the level of friend and family interaction?

[Lead Image Courtesy XKCD]

Would you make time for social networking sites other than Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+? Let us know.

I know I’m speculating, but I would say that these networks and a few others occupy all the time we have, and then some. Damien Patton understands this theory and believes that people are missing out on a lot of useful information as a result. In an attempt to provide a solution to this dilemma, his company recently introduced a new mobile app called Banjo.

The app is essentially a service, or layer, that aggregates information from existing social networks. It takes publicly available information that users post on other social sites and pulls it into one single location.

“The idea was to help all the people that are having multiple accounts, or those who haven’t even found social networks yet… find a new way to discover local or social on their mobile device in a way that is useful,” said Patton.

To access Banjo, users do not even have to log in to the app. They can simply open the app and discover new people and places around them. Users can also make new discoveries and become a part of other places. Since privacy is always a concern, Banjo helps users customize their settings to be seen either more or less.

While Banjo is all about promoting social connections, Patton was quick to point out that the service was not another social network. Since there are already so many networks that people have yet to embrace, he doesn’t think that they would join another one.

“I don’t think the world needs another social network,” he said. “We’re all missing out on all the great opportunities in life because we’re not able to watch all the networks at once.”

He believes that Banjo helps users by bringing all the networks together. He also told us that he hopes the app will take the combination of local and social on mobile devices mainstream.

As for the name, Patton said it fit because the service is fun and fast just like a banjo.

“It’s very unique and people are always gathered around because, wherever you are, you always have instant community, just like the banjo player,” he explained.

Do you think this new app will be useful for social networking?