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Google Plus vs. Facebook: Who Will Win In the Battle of Social Networking Sites?

Surely Facebook felt very little guilt when all of Myspace’s fans began ignoring their accounts and started networking by the thousands through Facebook instead, but I wonder how they will feel now that the tides have turned.  Pretty soon Google may know exactly what it feels like when Google + takes the world by storm in the very near future.  It should not come by surprise that Google is trying to hop on the social networking bandwagon again as they have tried in the past with platforms like Google Buzz and Google Friend Connect.  But the new Google attempt at social networking has got a lot of features that it didn’t have before, and a lot of features that Facebook only wishes it could have.

Chatting On Facebook vs. Hanging Out On Google Plus

Why chat with your friends when you can hang out with them right?  Well, we never had the option otherwise before Google + but now we have no excuses.  Facebook’s cheesy chat area will likely be getting little attention when users discover that Google Plus allows users to video chat with multiple friends at once.  What makes the feature super cool though is that you never know who might stop by to “hang out” with you and your friends, so its like being out while having the luxury of staying in.  Staying home on a Friday night may just get a little less boring thanks to Google Plus.  Sorry Facebook but I think Google won this round…

Facebook Status Updates vs. Google Plus Circle Updates

It’s great being able to update everyone on what is going on in your life but somethings are meant for some to hear and not others.  Facebook’s status update section is better than Myspace’s was but the Google Plus Circles updates are going to be a major Facebook update competitor.  With Google’s new feature you can update different circles of friends and family with different information.  So your friends don’t have to know that your mom made you lunch on any given day and your mom doesn’t have to know that your going to a strip joint that night.  Facebook will be hard pressed to compete with a feature like that, and probably wouldn’t even try since “privacy” is an ambigous word to them to begin with.  

Facebook Photo Sharing vs. Google Plus Instant Upload

Sharing photos through Facebook is a great way to share your experiences with friends and family but you could send them pictures in the mail by the time you get them uploaded to FB.  Google Plus is making it easier by doing all the work for you.  With Google + pictures are uploaded instantly so you can post them instantly.  Seems like Google + is winning this round too but I guess we will really just have to wait and see.

The preliminary evaluation puts Google + in the lead but until more people are”invited” to try it out we won’t know who the winner is going to be.  One thing we can be sure of though is that Google + has already got features that we have been waiting to see.

Written by Leonard, a freelance writer who writes about different web applications, os x antivirus, seo, technology, registry cleaner, hardware and software.

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Despite being immersed in the internet for 12 hours a day at times, I am not quite sure of the definition of a social network. Some are for bookmarks, some for articles and some for liking and commenting. My definition now is a site that I don’t own and I can put stuff on. What makes it social is that other people can see it. I was going to add “and interact”, but I don’t think that is necessarily a common denominator.

With 5,300,001 social networks out there, how do you choose? As an online marketer and/or blogger, you have ulterior motives. You want to build a network, get more subscribers and get more traffic to your blog. This is something you have to admit to yourself first. Once you join, you can drop your motives and be yourself. But initially you want to make sure that your time spent at the new network is time well spent. And one way to do this is to find people with like minds and like interests.

And if you are a blogger, the Bloghology Social Network may be for you. Bloghology has had a few setbacks. Starting as an online magazine with blogger interviews, we tried to make the jump to print and didn’t quite make it. But behind the scenes, the site where Bloghology is hosted has morphed into a social network for bloggers with new features being added almost weekly.

And here are some of those features:

• A Blog – Social networks are the new mini-sites. It is good to spread your content around. Hording all of it on your blog is not a good move. Readers have to find your blog first and one way they do is by reading what you have written on a social network that already has traffic. Now if only I could practice more what I preach.
• Groups – You can create groups and interact with other people on the network.
• Social Network Integration – A must if you belong to more than one. And I belong to a few.
• Events – You can post events and invite your friends from your network.
• Dashboard – You can change the look and layout of your profile. Plus, add widgets.

So if you are a blogger that wants to learn more about blogging or a blogger who wants to build your network and traffic to your site. Advertiser or marketer? You can continue to reach bloggers one at a time through contact forms or you can reach thousands at Bloghology. In these economic times, the two things corporations increased their budget on is creating content and social media marketing. A membership at Bloghology is free and is at the intersection of both.

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How do I write about my products? I have built a lot of different sites for a lot of different people and this question always comes up. I’m not quite sure why. Some of these people had had brick and mortar stores for years But somehow when it comes to writing about their products, they draw a blank.

And I can understand that. Most people don’t like to write. And if that’s the issue, I can understand that. But don’t tell me you don’t have anything to say about your product.

The best salesman know everything there is to know about the product they are selling. It is no different on the Internet. In fact, maybe even a bit easier to show all the knowledge you have of your products on the Internet. Most hosting providers will give you a virtually unlimited amount of storage. Use it. Use it to build content around your products.

And it doesn’t matter if it’s a product you manufacture, sell retail or sell as an affiliate. Those with the most information (backed with the right promotions) will win the prize. And yes, I did list affiliates, because there are a lot of companies out there that will create a product and just forget about it because they know there is an army of affiliates waiting to promote that product. Be an army of one. by not stopping with the information your vendor gives you.

And before you start writing content, remember this: you know a lot more than who you are writing for. That seems like a simple statement, but you have to consistently remind yourself this. I did not know how new newbies could be until I helped someone with their first WordPress installation. A sentence for an intermediate WordPress user can translate into a thesis for a newbie.

What Type of Content?

First there is the product itself.  What can you say about it? What color is the? What sizes it? Does it have any distinctive markings on it? What does it look like? If you had to identify it with the police sketch artist could you? I’m not asking these questions to be silly. I am asking them from experience. You’d be amazed at what people type into the search box. If you can answer that question, then your report is traffic.

What are the features of the product? We’ve all heard about features and benefits. The features are basically what a product does. And the benefits list how you benefit from the product. You’ve probably heard that you should focus on the benefits, but we are not just in the advertising field, we are also in the search engine field. A benefit may get someone to buy, but people search for features. When I want to make sure the gaps under my doors aren’t letting in cold air, I don’t search for “lower heating bills”. I search for “seal gap under door”.

But keep benefits in mind also. Benefits are for selling to people that aren’t in the market or at least, don’t think they are. The person on a mission will search for “seal gap under door”, but the person just browsing will need to be thrown the hint “lowers heating bills” which will jog his memory about last month’s bill. And if you have a lot of products that fulfill that benefit, you’re in luck. Benefits are more general and content is easier to find and create.

Tutorials are another way to expand the content you have available with a product. Again, it doesn’t matter if the product is your own or you are just an affiliate. A lot of affiliates have cleaned up by creating a bigger resource for the product they are selling than the vendor themselves. How do you use the product normally? What are some unconventional uses? What are some really unconventional uses? How do you do one very specific thing with the software? How do you do another? And another? Be clear and write good step by step instructions.

Written text is one form of content. We also have pictures, pictures you may need for the tutorials above. It is best to give these files a keyword based file name to help with your ranking. It may also help to host your images on a social image site like Flickr to get a bit more extra traffic. Then just add the flickr code to your posts or your pages.

Videos are another form of content that can help. Creating videos of you using or installing the product you sell. And make sure that you don’t just host the video on your site. Spread it as far you can by uploading it to every video site you can find.

Put a contact form on your site and beg for questions. Then answer them with posts when it makes sense to do so. If no one is asking questions, go to forums and answer sites and answer them there. Then go back to your site and write a more detailed answer.

Where to Put Your Content

Your site is a good start. But it is not the end.

You noticed that I said to host your pictures and videos on a social site if you can. This was not just to save you storage space. These sites have communities, huge communities.

There are also social networks, article directories and forums out there. On the internet, you have to think about potential. There are potential customers on these sites who will never find your site unless you make it visible to them. But here is not the place to sell. Here is the place to write anything related to your products that will set you up as an expert in your field or niche.

No product descriptions. No sales pages. No features. Show your knowledge of a product by covering it’s niche. If you sell computers, write about how to install a video card. If you sell blog themes, write about css

Content ideas are everywhere, you just have to look. And if you listen, potential customers will give you the best content ideas. But don’t be greedy and keep all of your content on site. The benefits of spreading your content around to various social sites and networks are massive. Now get to work. You have a lot of content to create.

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One of the reasons I don’t post as often as I used to here is social networks. Another reason is that not writing one day starts a trend. It may take 21 days to build a habit but it only takes a couple to break it. Hey, but Twitter makes up for, in one way. Not really, but I like to tell myself that. I guess if I write 40 tweets a day, that’s the equivalent of one post.

I have been meaning to write a post exclusively about Twitter for a long time, but I hate rehashing things that others have said. And a lot has been said about Twitter, a tool I didn’t understand at first and did nothing but make fun of.

I no longer make fun of Twitter. I am a true believer.

Twitter is a Model for ESP

Or ESPN for that matter. Yes, you can get sport scores. As I write this, I am not checking. I am just having faith. Faith that Twitter will provide. And Twitter has provided a lot.

I used to bitch more often on Twitter until my wife told me that people might think that I’m an asshole. But if that’s your groove, go with it. I bitched about Comcast one day and the next had no cable problems. If I would have called them on the phone, I would have been on hold for 20 minutes and would had to have proved a problem existed and they would have sent a technician in about a week.

With Twitter, if you say it, it’s true. Or at least true enough that someone will try to oil your squeaking wheel before too many people hear you squeaking. But I don’t bitch as much as I used to. I think I may still be an asshole though.

Twitter as the Digital Collective Unconscious

You have to learn to release yourself to Twitter. In Twitter you trust. Ask and Twitter shall provide.

Throw out something. Ask a question. It is the Magic 8 Ball. Hey, that gives me an idea for a Twitter app and makes me wonder if Twitter cuts my thoughts and attention into bite sized chunks. Ok, back on subject. Oh, yes, Twitter.

The more people that follow you, the more answer’s to question you have and there are some smart people on Twitter. I never much liked forums for answering questions. That’s like being on hold again, until the next day or so. But Twitter is fast. Or, I mean, the people on Twitter are. God, we aren’t exactly in the Matrix. That was a movie, damn it.

Twitter is the Invisible Man You Talk to in Your Head

He does exist. I have been wondering.

You know how you were embarrassed about being a Trekkie until you found other Trekkies, enough to outnumber the people that laughed at you. And then you had a posse. And posse’s validate you. Or at least spread the embarrassment around a bit more. It works like this: embarrassment factor = total embarrassment/amount of people in your group.

You would be amazed at the value of the stupid shit you say to yourself. It may help others. Or at least get a laugh. Don’t waste it talking to yourself. Put it up on Twitter.

So Where Doe This Winning Friends and Influence Come In

Well, you see, I was influenced. And this post was about some of the ways that happened.

And if you want to follow me on Twitter, be prepared.

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Image via Wikipedia

Organic is used a lot on the internet. So let me explain how I am applying it to social media marketing.

How do you learn social media marketing? That was a question I asked myself a few months ago. It was a new animal to tackle. I had blogged and used SEO, now it was time to learn something new. But was it?

I joined StumbleUpon in 2004 when the marketer’s on the site could be counted on one hand. Did I market my sites? Not really. I just thumbed up sites and pages I liked. It was simple and natural. No ulterior motives. That combined with the fact that StumbleUpon is a bit addictive helped me become a top Stumbler for months at a time.

After a while, I scolded myself though. “This is not getting work done.” So I went back to doing work online instead of playing. Back to the SEO that I knew and that made me a lot of money when combined with affiliate programs. I took that route for a couple of years until I popped my head back up to realize that I was falling behind.

During that period of burying my head in the sand, blogs exploded, videos exploded and social networks exploded. And I didn’t know much about any of them. When I got to the social media marketing part of my self-created curriculum, I forgot about my past StumbleUpon experience.

What did I do instead? I started looking for hot stories. I subscribed to the feeds of blogs that were consistently showing up on the hot pages of social networks. I would open 4 tabs at the same type. In each tab, a different flavor of meme trackers. This was all to teach me what a good story was. I had some success with this method. But I was adding nothing and my comments were worthless, for the most part, because most of the stories didn’t really interest me.

I had become a machine, processing stories and comparing then to hot stories I had seen before. A little calculator was going in my head figuring out the odds of a story becoming hot and me being the one to find it. Stop!!!

And then I started thinking. If all of the following are covered:

• You write about a topic you enjoy.
• You research a topic you are passionate about.
• You read blogs on that topic.

Then there is no need to worry about how you use social media. Just learn the mechanics and use it. Just use it. After reading post after post on how to use social media, I was back to that point where I first tried StumbleUpon, was finding new sites I had never imagined before and wasn’t thinking about how it was effecting the traffic to my sites. Drop your ulterior motives and like things for the sake of liking them. That and maybe read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” every now and then and you should be alright. Articles on the topic can help, but for the most part, they are just telling you what you already know. The medium is different. The people, the same.

Until the bugs are all swatted on this server I am running on and I grow a second set of arms, I am pretty much behind. Behind on this. Behind on that. Mention something else and I will probably be behind on that one too. It happens when I focus on one thing to long and then the balls start dropping around me.

But the Bloghology social network has been going strong and making great strides and many of you there have friended me. But I haven’t been much of a friend as of late, because of current issues. But the show has to go on.

So what is this social network exactly and why should you join? There are so many, right? Is this just another clone? I know the questions and they are all valid. We have all seen social networks claiming to be the next best thing since weblogs became blogs. I have joined a few.

The Bloghology social network has been designed to connect bloggers, marketers and advertisers and here are some of the features it has currently:

• Personal Profiles where you can promote your blogs and profiles on other networks and describe you expertise.
• Photo and Video Albums that I will be testing out while I am mobile as soon as they connect my new phone today.
• Everyone gets a blog on site to promote their knowledge and expertise as well as the standard “update” feature that sites like MySpace and Facebook have.
• Members can create their own groups based on their interests.
• Members can create their own events calendar and invite other members to join. There is even an RSVP feature.
• Members can use live chat to talk to other members when the update and comment features are just not fast enough.
• Do you have something to sell? Well, there is the classified section where members can list products and services that will be visible to every member of the Bloghology network. And if you need a little more promotion for your products, for a limited time, you can buy a site wide banner for only $25 a month.

And just to let you know, that’s not the end of the features. That’s just where we are now and it’s the perfect time to get your foot in the door and make some friends. And don’t forget to include me in that circle.

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You see the WTFMO widget on the side of my blog. It’s a scam. For a while there I was signing up for everything like a maniac. Not that that is a bad thing. It is good to stake your claim on a few social networks. In fact, I have heard it said you should, before an imposter pops in and claims your username before you can get it. Not that anyone would want to impersonate me, but it’s a nice pipe dream.

But it got to a point that there was just no way in hell that I could ever be active at every one of these sites, so eventually I had to pick some winners. And don’t get me wrong, these are temporary winners. I am very fickle when it comes to social sites and this list may be different a few months from now.

First I had to figure out what my purpose was in visiting and using these sites. I like the reciprocal effect. I like utility. And I like reading stories that aren’t the same stories I read a few days ago with a few points switched around. I also like new software and concepts of all types.

Digg, for the most part, just pisses me off. By the time you have 25 friends, your inbox is full daily. It is very impersonal. For the most part, here’s the game: Get as many friends as you can. Digg all of their stuff. Then call in your favors when you have your own stuff. It’s a lot of damn work and most of the categories are very vertical. The same type of stories rise to the top all the time despite the new categories. So Digg is kind of on my bad side right now.

I actually came back to Facebook after calling it a spam machine. I just learned to use it more effectively. So I make minor appearances there with some friends who only use it and of course, I find friends from other networks.

Mixx I am kind of checking out. I don’t get it yet and will have to spend some quality time there before I have an opinion.

Now for the networks I really use

Delicious

If you really want to know what I am researching and even get the gist of upcoming posts before I write them, this is where you will find the most information. I use it as a research archive. When I went from browser bookmarks to delicious, it took a while for me to use tags rather than folders, but I never went back.

Twitter

Of course. I made fun of this one to. “What are you doing?” “Typing an update.” For the most part, you just have to jump in, follow some people, and just go with the flow. You will get it eventually.

It is were I vent, ask questions that get a quicker response than a forum or even a search at times and notify my followers of the cool things. I also learn a lot from the people I follow. It is like a web shaped forum with post limits.

StumbleUpon

No friend spammer here. If you want to send something to someone else, you have to pick and choose. More real and less face in the crowd than Digg. And reciprocal stumbles happen a lot if you are in the right place at the right time.

FriendFeed

I have heard a lot of people say that they like Twitter better or they like Friendfeed better. Apples and oranges people.

If you have someone whose opinion you respect, there is no better place to follow them than on Friendfeed because you get everything. Their tweets. Their stumbles. Their blog posts. Their diggs. All in a river format. It is faster and easier than a feed reader and it doesn’t slow down my computer like a feed reader can with a few hundred feeds.

And you can comment on or “like” any one of the items that happen to be in your river and join into conversations with other Friendfeed users. Like Twitter, it will take a while before you will “get it”.

Social Median

I like this one and am not sure why. Maybe because it is new. Maybe just because I like it. One of the features I do like is the fact it does a pretty good job of categorizing your “clips” without you having to add tags or categories. And it pulls unclipped stories out of blue and brings those to you too based on your interests, giving you the chance to be first and lazy at the same time.

Twine

A lot of the users here are way above my head. This is where you will find science, web 3.0, philosophy, and a lot of other topics that it takes a few brain cells to understand. And some of the stories I have to read really slow just to barely scratch the surface of the new knowledge. But I like that. It is like a drug at times.

Ping.fm

Okay, not a network but a way to send updates to many of the networks I don’t frequent that often. It can be abused. There is no point in spewing everything out over various networks. But I use it every now and then and actually check those various networks to see who bites and if I can get a conversation going.

The Tools

I wrote a post on tools a while back and have narrowed those down a bit too. The shiny, flashy ones for the most part only covered 1-4 networks at the most, but I still use a lot of the tools listed there. But for the most part I use two, that are very simple.

One is SocialAddict which is just a custom browser with links to most of the networks I visit. The other is a userscript that you can add to your Firefox or Flock browser. It is called FFWorkSpace and it loads other social sites inside of Friendfeed as shown below.

An awesome userscript.

So that’s where I’m at for now. Hope to see you there too.

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I went back to Darkroom today. I needed only to see the words continuing on the black screen to know that I missed this. I think I actually type faster that I write now. I cheat though and look at the keys as I am typing.

I just opened Darkroom up right in the middle of doing other things and decided I needed to write something. So this post is probably going to be very loose and disconnected but I don’t really care right now. The words need to come out.

I do like writing posts. I do like writing in general. I see it as the icing on the cake. But I also know that I can write and write on this and other blogs but it will really do no good unless I do some of the hidden work.

And for those readers out there who are used to the post a day that I wrote for months, I am sorry that my frequency has slowed down. It’s not slacking. It’s on purpose. I need to get other things done.

The things that I am working on should free up a lot of time for more writing. But they don’t just happen. I have to work on them.

This is one of the reason I spread out into a lot of social networks and am trying to be a dedicated Twitter user. Just to let all of you know that I did not disappear and that there will be posts.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Twitter goes down a lot. From the levels of use Twitter gets, they will either fix it or someone will come along and build something that will take it’s place. It’s inevitable.

It’s #1 at what it does and the only way I stay connected to the internet everywhere I go. I went looking for another possibility for a while but I think I will wait it out and see who is left standing.

I will be investigating feeds, lifestreams, and lifeclusters. I just had to check if lifecluster had been coined yet. Not in the way I have been using it, so I think I am safe.

A lifestream is great. I have a few going right now with a few services. I also have one I am building out of Gregarius. They take all activities from all your blogs and networks and stream them in chronological order.

When I started blogging, I wondered the same thing that I did when I investigated lifestreams. What value is the chronological order? Another question: Is a to-do list a future stream?

I have paged through blogs in chronological order to get an idea of the direction a blog is going, but when I need to actually learn something, I use the search function. The dates do not matter.

A lifestream is linear. It assumes that none of this data is connected in other ways. If I am researching a certain topic for a period of time, my lifestream will show this, but without paging through the past, there is no way to know if I had already been down this trail and found other information of interest.

And this dilemma has been stuck in my head for years. I started with a structured universal category system, similar to the Dewey decimal system. This I would back up with keyword concentration data to determine like content.

Then tags came along as I was working on this along with the Yahoo api for extracting tags. But that still is not very smart. Is soap a cleaning substance or a web technology?

Then I ran into the semantic web, which I thought was the answer. But then I noticed that it did not cover ideas and knowledge. The systems I found mainly identified objects: people, places, and things.

Now I am sort of turning back to a universal tagging structure after seeing technology like Faviki which uses Wikipedia topics as tags. I would seem that Wikipedia would grow to cover all knowledge, therefore the tag base will grow with time and bits and pieces of a lifestream can be grouped into lifeclusters via these.

Of course, not being one to follow only one trail at a time, the whole concept of knowledge organization has traveled back to the idea seed.

As you mindmap a post idea, niche site idea or any idea in general, what if each node were tagged and pulled in data from your lifestream. As you map the idea, the information you have researched in the past starts grouping around each node, so that by the point you’re done with a mind map, all the data you need is there also.

This concept comes from the way I bookmark. I search, scan, evaluate quickly and then tag. I go after quantity, then I start mining specifics.

And after a post is written, if all the research material were available to the reader, the idea would complete a full circuit and branch out into related ideas, just like ideas do in the mind. From the point of view of the mind, a lifestream is very one dimensional.

Well this is where I am at now. Again with the questions. And a post with no real answers. There is no straight lines in nature. Anything that exists on earth has a job ahead of it if it wants to go against what is natural. Streams join and separate and eventually flow into the oceans.