Social mobile apps - just too bad

I don't understand. There are big social networks like Facebook, Linkedin or even google+ with millions of users spending a lot of time on their website. But it seems they don't understand that there are users who are not anymore using PCs for their social engagement. Especially most of us don't want to use FB or google+ on our work PCs. The only alternative is to use our mobile device, either a smart phone or an iPad (I don't care about other pads).

Starting with the smart phone. All of them have a smart phone app but the apps are so limited and somehow only designed for on the go. In Google+ is no hangout. Facebook has no ability to create groups and you can't play any of the games. Linkedin is very limited too. You are not able to see company statistics which is a really good feature online.











But the most frustrating part is that non of the apps are stable or work really well. The most stable app is google+ but maybe because it has the least features. Non of them allow to change any important user settings, you still have to go to the website to do so. Plus any notification you get via email with link will open the website when clicking on the link instead of the apps. It is really not hard to recognize the device and try to open the app if the app is installed on the iPhone. I saw this with other apps.

The iPad is a different story. There is no Facebook, Google+ or linkedin iPad app yet. Facebook is working on an iPad app and was accessible a while ago through a jail broken iPad.

Google+ will always set your iPad to mobile webpage, which is annoying because the real estate is too big for mobile layout. You can change the page to desktop but anytime you click around it goes back to mobile.




Facebook of course is limited on the iPad, because of missing flash.





And some layout looks off and the website is not build for touch. Granted Facebook will eliminate flash but still it is not build to use on a touch screen.

Linkedin has the same issues it requires flash for statistics which are not working on the iPad and it is hard to use touch only. Searching your linked in connections is almost not possible.




I can't understand that everybody is talking about social which I think is already old and standard. On the other hand everybody is talking about mobile, but it seems nobody does a real attempt to deliver really good mobile experience, which is weird.

Because in terms Apple devices there are only two form factors and much easier to optimize than for PCs (which have many different browsers and version etc.)
Of course there are many Android devices but still not impossible to develop for it.

The app store has over 300k apps and Android not much less but there are not many apps I would consider perfect, but for sure the three big social networks are just poor.

The only exception is twitter, they did their homework. They have a good iPhone app and a real iPad app.




But the funny part is that I use twitter on the iPhone to post and on the iPad to read and therefore the two apps are designed for this. It is really easy to post on the iPhone but hard to read, and it is the other way around with the iPad app.

It is really time for the companies to understand that mobile is not just a toy and that mobile devices are not just an extension to PCs. In many situation in our live the mobile device is central point of use.

We only used all the time PCs because there were no mobile devices. Using during work something to post or read unrelated to work will be not anymore our PC, because we don't want that our company can keep record on things we do. We have our phone always with us and we want to do more than just check in. I know many people who are using their iPad at home instead of a notebook, because it is so convenient to read or surf the bed or on the coach without having 50 pounds laying on our lap.

The notebook is dead. In less than 2 years the notebook sale will be decreasing by more than 60% therefore brands and social networks must invest more in mobile.
I don't want to post every year how nobody understands to build a working mobile experience. It should not be anymore a topic, mobile is standard like social.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Everybody talks about Silicon Valley - do you know indeed.com in Stamford, CT?

I am not on job hunt and pretty happy were I am right now. I am now almost three years at my company and not really up to date what are the best websites are to look for a job.
I remember 10 years ago, back in Germany, Monster was the big thing to post your resume and to search for a job.
3 years ago "the ladders" was the right place to go if you want to earn more than $100k a year. I unfortunately have to admit I had no luck with theladders.com. I paid a lot of money for no results and found my job through a headhunter.
If you search in bing for "theladders scam" you get 2.5 million results, this tells a lot.

Last week a friend of mine asked me if I could recommend him a website because he's is on a job hunt. I said linkedin.com. He did not like it, because there were too many IT jobs and too less jobs in Tampa.
Of course under my friends and family I am the designated Internet expert, therefore I made a research and came across of indeed.com.
If the website would not say indeed.com then I would think it is google.




It is amazing how fast the results are coming back, how easy to search, it has even facetted search. Different than all other job searches indeed.com is just like google.com. You only get results and these click away to the company which did post the job. But you can upload your resume and use it through this site.
And because it is only a search engine you can't see for which job you already applied for (I can't be sure because I did not apply for any job).
You can sign into indeed.com using your Facebook account or setting manual a new account up. Under trends you can see where your job is most needed.

I instantly liked indeed.com and was wondering since when they are around and how they are doing. I imagined they should do well because they use same method like Google.com. Companies only pay per click.

I went to Crunchbase.com:





Indeed did get latest funding 6 years ago in 2005 ($5m). On their website they claim:
Indeed is the #1 job site worldwide, with over 50 million unique visitors and 1 billion job searches per month. Indeed is available in more than 50 countries and 26 languages, covering 94% of global GDP.

They have more traffic than monster, simplyhired, theladders or yahoo jobs.





Indeed is a private company and does not disclose their revenue. But it seems to go well, no new funding and no planned IPO yet. And this company is even not based in SV. According to linkedin.com, indeed has at least 234 employees but less than 500.
However the business is growing and they have a lot of open positions.



I think (as well a few others) that indeed.com is one of secret success story. Almost no top management changes since 2004. Founders still on board in active roles. Bigger in traffic than monster and very good revenue model. If it works for google why should it not work for indeed.com.

We should keep an eye on indeed.com and when beginning 2012 the big new hype of Internet IPO starts (or better social IPO), then indeed.com might be one of the companies and if so then they will do very well.

It is fascinating how everybody talks about Facebook, twitter, linkedin, foursquare and many new start ups, but nobody seems to recognize indeed.com which is already 6 years old and eventual makes more money then all of them.

It would be interesting how much revenue per head count they make.

Let us assume indeed.com gets per click in average $4 and every search results in 0.1 click on sponsored links or sponsored jobs. The claim to have 1 billion search results a month.
1billion x 0.1 x $4 x 12 months = $4.8 billion

Almost $5 billion in revenue is surely possible. Keep your eyes and ears open for indeed.com in Stamford.

And my friend is now happy I could help him.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

What is the right social network?

Today is all about being in social networks. There are many social networks from Facebook, twitter, foursquare to linkedin, living social, Groupon and myspace.

Trying to keep up with all of them is almost not possible. At the end we need to make decision which one serve us the best. But which one is the best for us?

Let us first look to what kind group we belong to. I believe we can reduce it to three main groups:
Consumer, celebrities and brands. All three groups have many sub groups but I try to keep it simple with these main groups.
All 3 types have two ways to be social. Either reading information and make certain decisions based on collected information or to post information to influence others to make their decision.

As a consumer we gather information to make buying decisions or to express ourself to let others know what we are doing and what we like.

Facebook:
One of the most prominent platform for social media marketing is FaceBook. FaceBook was born in Harvard dorm room under the aegis of Mark Zukerberg and co- founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin in February 2004.

50% of active users log on to the site in any given day
People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on FaceBook
More than 35 million users update their position apiece day
More than 60 million position updates posted apiece day
More than 3 billion pictures uploaded on the site apiece month
There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, pic albums, etc.) shared apiece month
More than 3 million active pages
More than 1.5 million local businesses have active pages
More than 20 million people become fans of pages apiece day
More than 5.3 billion fans are created by Pages
Average individual has 130 friends
Average individual sends 8 friend requests per month
Average individual spends 55 minutes on FaceBook
Average individual clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content apiece month
Average individual writes 25 comments on FaceBook content apiece month
Average individual becomes a fan of 4 pages apiece month
Average individual is invited to 3 events per month
Average individual is a member of 13 groups
More than 70 translations acquirable on the site
Top countries using FaceBook are US, UK, Indonesia, Turkey, France, Italy, Canada, Philippines and Mexico
More than 200 million active users currently access FaceBook through their mobile phones


Facebook has over 850 Million accounts and over 500 million active user. In average each user has 130 friends with 70% Facebook users outside of the US.
Facebook is the right place for keeping in touch with friends far away or to find old friends. The chances are really good to find somebody you did not hear from over 20 years. Many people are posting every day images or small status updates. But the most rime user are spending in playing games.
Facebook is a great tool for brands to engage their consumers and to learn about the consumers needs, likes and dislikes. Facebook is a great place for brands to test products before they are even on the market. Important for brands is a fan base. There are multiple ways to gain more fans. The most successful way today is to post everywhere (on website, packages and ads) the Facebook page URL with special deals which the user can only unlock if they "like" the fan page.
Brands need to post daily news on their wall and need to be proactive in communicating with the consumer on Facebook. A brand can learn a lot from their consumers but need to be aware that there will be a lot of negative comments and maybe an anti brand fan page. Negative comments and anti fan pages are good. No comments and no fans are bad. It is important to react correct to negative comments. The more brands engage the consumer to tell them their true feeling the more the fan page will regulate itself as a positive page, as long the brand answers these negative vibes in a positive way. If consumers are complaining about bad customer service then listen and change the quality of customer service. Let the fans know you changed the customer service and let them vote again how the service is now. The results sill be better than any other PR action.
Facebook is as well a good place for celebrities but as well a dangerous place to be. Many celebrities are engaging marketing firms to handle their Facebook page. The fans will find out when the voice is different than in public. A good example for a great page is lady gaga. The Facebook page sounds authentic, you feel like reading her real diary. As a result she has over 32 million fans.




Facebook is for brands a great advertising platform. No other platform can offer such targeted advertisement to such a big user base. However Facebook ads are not very speaking to the users and have a very low click rate. More users are moving to to mobile Facebook which has no ads at all.

The best addition for companies and brands at Facebook is places. We all love to check-in into restaurants and concerts etc. Brands can offer specials right when the consumer is already outside of their home and ready to spend money.


Linkedin

LinkedIn was founded in 2003. The site launched on May 5th (affectionately referred to by employees as "Cinco de LinkedIn") when the five founders invited about 350 of their most important contacts to join. At the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4,500 members in the network. LinkedIn's first "real" office was on Shoreline Road in Mountain View.

LinkedIn adds a new member every second and just hit 100 million users.
52% are outside the US.
44 million users are in the US
India has 9 million and UK has 6 million users.
The avearge age of global users is 25-45 and it’s almost 60% males on there globally (compare this to Twitter which has more females). The US has the most females with 45% and the Middle East the least with 33%.
Most users are working for companies with over 1,000 employees, this is especially true in Asia. The biggest proportion of companies are active in High-Tech (16%), Finance (13%) and Manufacturing.
12% of all users say they are in a sales function. 10% are either in academia, administration or operations.
Engineering is the profession of 9% and 8% are in information technology.

Linkedin is the number one social network for professionals. It is a great place to build your network around your profession, If you are looking for a new job or for an investor. But be careful with linkedin. Most employer will look up your profile and compare it against your resume. Brands can utilize linkedin to find new talents for their company. Linkedin has over 100 million users and is a better job market than monster (in my opinion). Linkedin helps to build networks within the network. People might not use linkedin as frequent as Facebook but every entry is more powerful in good as in bad. Companies can easily build a personalty profile on linkedin entries. Connections to a certain group of people or a list of profile updates and reading list can tell stories. Your employer might get suspicious when you you suddenly get a lot of recommendations or if you connect with multiple recruiters. All these updates are showing in your status list. People tend to connect with coworkers really fast and then a job search is no secret anymore.
At the other hand linkedin can be very powerful when your are in sales and need a contact to a company. Many times we are only 2 connections away to the company. Getting introduced is pretty easy.
Linkedin helps to gather information about companies which we might not find easily through google or company websites.





Twitter
Initially, code titled Twttr, inspired by Flickr, Twitter privately appeared in March 2006. Later, in June 2006, it was launched for public with the study Twttr.com and rebranded to Twitter.com later in October the same year. Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. It is an online application that is part blog, part social networking site, part cell phone/IM tool, designed to let users answer the question “What are you doing?”. Users have 140 characters for apiece posting (or “tweet”) to state whatever they care to say. In terms of online traffic density and visit frequency, Twitter leads the breed of social media sites.

Important Statistics about Twitter

More than 175 million accounts
Number of Twitter users increases at 300,000 everyday
3 Billion requests apiece day generated by 180 million one-of-a-kind visitors
95 million tweets per day, that gives circa 640 tweets per second
Twitter’s search engine gets 600 million queries each day
Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter
32% of accounts are active users
10-11pm is the most active hour on twitter
Top languages used are english, portugese, japanese and spanish
Top countries using twitter are US, India, Japan, Germany, UK, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Australia and Spain
More than 70,000 applications have been created using Twitter API
More than 67% of Twitter messages are in the form of user’s current status, private conversation and links to news and blog articles
The majority of twitter users are female.

Twitter is for most users about consuming. Twitter is right now mostly used by celebrities to post their updates. Only 24% of twitter posts are directly done through twitter website or twitter app. Most posts are generated as a side effect on webpages and blogs.
Many brands don't know yet to utilize twitter other than having a tweet button on their website. The risk with twitter is the 140 characters length of posts. There are risks to send the wrong message which can be dangerous for companies.
But twitter can be a great consumer building tool when using twitter as a real group building social platform. This can be as simple as posting a job opening and to engage the applicants to use twitter to apply or as complex as taking all new twitter posts to a topic to generate the longest song lyric in history.
Twitter is for consumer mostly to consume and not to be active. For celebrities it is the perfect tool to bind their fans. Posts are easy and fast and cam be done everywhere the cell phone works.
The top 5 twitter accounts are celebrities.



But twitter is as well a perfect tool to see trends and to learn about people. Usually people, especially business people, do only post on twitter when they do care about things, either positive or negative. Sales managers can use twitter to find out what their potential buyer like (who is he following) and what does the potential buyer think (postings by the buyer).
Companies doe good to hire data mining experts to scan and analyze twitter posts. Big international events have been faster on twitter than in the news. Facebook and twitter even helped to start revolutions like the latest in Egypt.

There are many other social networks, which can be considered and I could write a whole book, but I guess nobody would want to read hundreds of pages about social networks therefore I decided to stay with the top 3 for this post.

Coming back to the original question, which social network is the right one?
It depends on the goal, and I hope my little comparison could help to make a decision. At the end there is only one big mistake we can do and not to use any of these networks or platforms regularly.

Remember before Internet, we could have a flyer or catalog for over years with same content and nobody did care. With the Internet we learned that we had to change info weekly that our readers or consumers don't lose interest.
The social networks are forcing us to do multiple times a day updates otherwise we lose our readers/friends/followers.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Social network: the interaction is involuntary

We are writing now the second year of social Internet, and I am still not clear why everything is called social, but things which are social are not called social.

Please don't understand wrong. Facebook got big, Zynga is number one Game platform for online games. Angry Birds has unbelievable success. Almost every celebrity is on twitter and having not a linkedin account is fatal if you want to get to the next professional level. And don't forget Groupon the best deals ever. They are all listed when we talk about social networking or social gaming. Together they are valued $170billion, so much money can't be wrong.

I had to surf the Internet to find a definition, to see if I get it now. Wikipedias definition of social:
The term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms (humans in particular, though biologists also apply the term to populations of other animals). It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.

This is a start but I did want to know what social networking definition is:
Again Wikipedia was helpful:
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Although online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service. In a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.

In a birds view Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are social networks. But diving deeper, I got the feeling they are not social or not more social than forums which exist much longer. And what is about the dating websites like match.com or eharmony, they should be social too.

Facebook:
FB might has started as a social network, to get students together on a platform to meet and discuss when they can't meet in person. Not much is left since then. FB has over 500 million users and is now more a platform than a network, there are many restrictions and tons of 3rd party applications, everybody gets pressed into the same. FB went to a platform driven by commerce. More and more brands are using this platform to gain brand loyalty. The interactions are many times one sided. We post and hope others will read and interact. FB is surely closer to social than twitter.

Twitter:
In the highest mean of social, twitter is a social network. But it has for me the less social aspect of all. We tweet to gain followers, sometimes retweet or forward tweets. There is no real big social interaction, or otherwise how could it come that a Charlie Sheen can gain 3 million followers with not many tweets (less than hundred) and most of them useless and meaningless.

Linkedin:
It is all about with who we are connected. But to be connected does not define to be social. I know my neighbor, but I don't socialize with him. Same with linkedin. How many contacts do we have and how many of them do we interact on a regular basis.

All three social networks are for me platforms which are pretending to be social, but 90% of interaction is given by the platform algorithm. When a system decides the social part, then it is not social anymore. The definition says "The term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms (humans in particular, though biologists also apply the term to populations of other animals)."

The platforms are software, they are not human. Imagine how less "social" these platforms would be if the user would actually need to look for somebody and Interact with this person. Sure we do this on these platforms but much less than the companies try to tell us. I get connect requests in linkedin. If I like the person profile or I think this person might be in the future helpful then i accept the invitation. This might be then the first and last interaction. However the platform let me believe we are social because I see their user profile updates. Pretty sure most of my contacts do not care, if I know what they are doing.
Look at twitter, we start following people with just one click but are we really reading their tweets all the time. If you follow 100 people, how much of their tweet do you read? But the platform let us believe we care and the people we follow do care. I don't think Mr. Sheen does even know I follow him. And I even don't know when I read the last time his tweets. He might even not tweet anymore. What is social on this?

Facebook let us see all our friends updates and wall entries, but if we are really as social as FB let us believe with all the updates posted on our page, why do we then get only feedback from few friends to some posts.

Social is intersection between at least 2 human beings and not one posting and a computer interacting by posting these infos to other pages.

A Facebook user has in average 130 friends, how can we socialize with so many?



Zynga:
7 out of the top 10 games on Facebook are from Zynga like Farmville. 3 of the top 5 applications on Facebook are Zynga games.






Did you ever play Mafia Wars or Farmville? I did, not much and good, but I get all the time game requests on FB. I accept or not, but where is the social aspect? Only because we send to somebody a request and if this person does accept it, we get more points? Do we really interact to each other? Asking questions, help each others? Maybe some people but not the majority.



Angry Birds:
I play Angry Birds I love the game, but this game has less social than any Zynga game. I can see how well I did in the rankings and the most social interaction with Angry Birds is the coffee break talk how to master level 4-14.

Groupon:
I guess most of my readers did at least get one coupon on Groupon, otherwise the company could not gave been able to generate $1 Billion in revenue and be the fastest growing Internet company ever. But I don't get the social part. Groupon is offering 50% or more discount on products and services (mostly services because it is easier to grant high discount) if enough people are willing to get a coupon. The idea is great and the concept works, but only because multiple people need to want to have a coupon does make it social?
Groupon is a platform for coupons and e-commerce. Not more or less. The most social interaction I had, was asking a friend of mine to sign up that the minimum number of requests are met, that I can get my coupon for a spa day (btw he did not, but I did still get the coupon).

Maybe I am to negative, but this is how I see it.

On the other hand we have millions of forums where people are discussing and asking questions and others are answering, full of interaction is going on and mostly around the same topic during the discussion. Why did nobody call this in the time back social network?
I guess because of the last part of the definition.
"....whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary". This let me believe that social Internet networking or gaming is based on the last part of the social definition.
"Social network: the interaction is involuntary."

I wondering who invented the social network, how we understand today the social network.

In 1995, Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant founded a company called WELL, which could be considered as the first social networking site. Or a few years later Eric Leebow, he claims he had in 1999 a college website similar to Facebook called Freezecrowd.


Finally I found something which could help me to understand why the above companies are named social networks.
The term 'social network' was first coined in 1954 by J. A. Barnes (in: Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish, "Human Relations"). The maximum size of social networks tends to be around 150 people (Dunbar's number) and the average size around 124 (Hill and Dunbar, 2002).

A social network is a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds.

Finally I get it, if you have more than 150 friends, followers or connections, then you fall outside of a social network regardless how social FB, twitter etc is.
Period. I am not a member of a social network, because I have more friends or connections than 150. But wait I have less followers. Twitter is my social network.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Linkedin Extended Search

Linked extended their search function which some really nice features. The results of the search include linkedin updates and tweets.
The search comes really handy when your are looking for a new job or if you want to hire somebody.
Within the search results you can narrow the results down by network connectionsby companies, Industry, Time, Location, School and Topics. You can save the search,  if the search results as wanted.This makes the tool very helpful and a strong player for certain information finding. HR people will like this is they always look for certain professions. Linkedin is improving a lot and need to do to ensure their IPO will work well.

Linkedin is going public - is the time right?

Linkedin is the first of the new social starting stars with over 90 million users.
Linkedin is a social met work for professionals and has a basic free service. Users cam have better search function or other services if they pay a membership fee. Linkedin is right now at a value of almost $3 billion on the second market.

Linkedin started in November to find banks for their public offering process, interviewing bankers in early November before choosing Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase as its three lead advisers

Is the time right for an I.P.O?
A lot of people are waiting for Facebook, twitter and Groupon to go public. The hype for social is big and being the first to go public might boost the stock market for linkedin.
But on the other hand, many people might want to wait and see where it is going. Linkedin is much smaller in user base than Facebook or twitter and much less revenue than Groupon, and therefore the initial offering should be pretty low per stock.
It might have been smarter to wait till Facebook goes public, because many people won't want to spend $80 or $120 on a stock from FB and therefore might to buy linkedin stocks just to be in the social stock trading.

On the other hand linkedin can now need the money to expand more aggressive in Europe. Xing is still market leader in Europe as a professional social network.

It will be interesting to see how linkedin will perform on Wall Street and it will be slight indicator for Facebook and Groupon how the public and Wall Street is taking social companies.

Facebook is pretty smart to wait till a few of it competitors are public to learn from their mistakes. Facebook understood early that as a market leader it is not always the best to be the first. And nobody has yet experience with social platforms on the stock market.

Google learned in the time back a lot by watching other companies going public and chose the best time to file for IPO. Google was able to digest all what was going on and could therefore modify their approach that they even came up with a new way how people could reserve stocks.

I think linkedin could perform better if they would have wait to be the third or second one on the stock market in the US.

It will be interesting to watch. And if you have few thousand available, then buy linkedin stocks and sell them when Facebook goes public to use the money for Facebook stocks. Keep them 18 months and then in vest the winning in Apple or Asia, this is never wrong.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69