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What’s Next for Facebook: The Liked Like?

Recently, Facebook has been making a lot of changes, some to compete with services like Twitter and others to “enhance” user experience. The latest of which has been adding another “like” button so users can now “like” a comment. Previously, users could only like groups, photos, comments, etc., but now it seems almost everything on Facebook is like-able.

All this “liking” going on has me wondering what’s next for the social behemoth. Could it be the ability to “like” someone’s “like,” otherwise known as the backwards-double-inverted-liked-like, or “Liked-like” for short?

How that might look:

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Twitter Sets New Record for Tweets Per Second

Well, it’s no secret the World Cup is a big deal. Team names, coaches, players, and events have all been trending topics on Twitter since the matches first started last Friday. In fact, those tweets have set a few records for Twitter but none more than last night’s NBA championship game between the Lakers and the Celtics.

Earlier, Twitter released these numbers for the most tweeted goals of the past week:

1) Japan scores against Cameroon on June 14 in their 1-0 victory (2,940 TPS)
2) Brazil scores their first goal against North Korea in their 2-1 June 14 victory (2,928 TPS)
3) Mexico ties South Africa in their June 11 game (2,704 TPS)

While these numbers were huge compared to Twitter’s average of 750 Tweets Per Second (TPS), none were higher than the new record of 3,085 TPS which was set as the Lakers win over the Celtics came to an end last night. On any average day, users tweet more than 65,000,000 messages… Impressive.

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last update: May 17, 2012

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Twitter Inserts Promoted Trends in Trending Topics

For as long as I can remember, people have been wondering how Twitter was going to make money. Adding traditional ad spots would both look bad, and devalue the user experience. So far, Twitter has done a pretty good job with it’s Promoted Tweets which is probably the least intrusive ad I’ve ever seen. Today, Twitter launches Promoted Trends which are topics that show up in their Trending Topics section encouraging more conversation.

The first topic they’ve displayed is Toy Story 3, which comes out this weekend. So, is it working? Well, it’s hard to get exact numbers, but at 9am EST using the old school Twitter search, tweets including “Toy Story 3″ are coming in at about 100 per hour. Not bad. As we move into prime tweet time (PTT) for the United States, that number is likely to double or triple.

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5 Things Twitter Shouldn’t Adapt from Facebook

It’s been recently reported that Twitter is testing a new “You’re Both Following” feature, which is clearly inspired by Facebook’s “Mutual Friends” feature. While this move is pretty understandable, it got me a little concerned about Twitter’s future: what if Twitter keeps adapting itself to be more similar to Facebook? Here are five things I really hope Twitter doesn’t adapt from Facebook.

1. Applications

Yeah, Twitter has been adding new features – like location support – to battle competitors, but Facebook is a perfect example of how applications can be taken too far. I’m sure many people remember the Facebook Wall’s of the past which were clustered with dozens of applications. While that’s gone now, I still cringe every time my notifications list is overcome with MobWars invitations. Twitter’s appeal is in simplicity, so let’s keep it that way.

2. Embedded Media

Look, I’d be lying if I was a Twitter aficionado – I only recently got the damn thing (and only have 7 followers, so follow me @mhoughton hee hee!) – so needless to say the whole thing is a little bit overwhelming. However, one thing I immediately noticed was the clean uniformity of a Twitter page. Why? Because there aren’t half-dozen thumbnails of ironic rap videos posted by friends on my account page. There isn’t a horde of tagged photos of me performing my karaoke rendition of Mariah Carey’s Loverboy from Saturday night. And there are definitely no LOLcat photos that have only now been discovered by my mother. If only for my sake, stay clean, Twitter.

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Twitter Acquires Smallthought Systems

We recently wrote about Twitter’s acquisition CloudHopper, a software startup from Seattle. And now, it looks like Twitter is back on the acquisition front announcing today their purchase of Smallthought Systems. The merger will bring not only the database management, but also the analytics measurement in house.

Smallthought Systems will be bringing its database system, Dabble DB, and its widely used analytics platform, Trendly to Twitter.

Twitter had this to say:

When Smallthought launched Trendly, a tool that helps web sites distinguish signal from noise in their Google Analytics data, we were among the first to try it. And, as Twitter is the world’s largest Ruby on Rails-based web service, we are impressed with their frequent contributions to the Ruby and Smalltalk development communities. Their team has a unique combination of entrepreneurship, creativity, and analytics expertise.

Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we announce the acquisition of Smallthought Systems. They have joined our analytics team and will focus on integrating ideas from Trendly into our current tools and building innovative realtime products for our future commercial partners.

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Interactive Map Tells Where and Why Social Networks are Banned

There are many countries recently that have been banning various social networks for various reasons. I’m sure you heard about Facebook and Twitter being blocked in Pakistan because of all the Muhammad comic controversy a couple weeks ago. There is the banning of Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in China for obvious reasons (per their government).

What about the less obvious ones like MySpace at all Apple stores in the U.S. because people were bogarting the MacBooks snapping profile pics from the webcams. Or the Marine Corps banning both Twitter and Facebook, the reason being what is perceived to be security risks by the spread of personal data.

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Did Twitter Just Kill URL Shorteners?

Twitter has just announced a big change to the way URLs are used within their site. Their goal is to eliminate the mystery of shortened links and prevent harmful spam, malware, and phishing attacks by rolling out an official URL shortening tool on Twitter called t.co, and in doing so, they may have just put an end to bit.ly and other major URL shorteners with millions of users.

In their most recent blog post, Twitter’s Sean Garrett has announced the change and explained how it works and protects users. Basically, all links on Twitter will be “wrapped” in their t.co short URL by default, eliminating the need for 3rd party URL shorteners. Right now, they are testing and tweaking this service on a few employees accounts, but plan to roll the changes out application-wide this summer.

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5 Ways Facebook Resembles A Real Cult

With all this talk about Facebook’s secret insignia as exposed on Mark Zuckerberg’s sweater lining, people have been throwing around the term “cult” an awful lot, and after some simple comparisons, I think for good reason. By distinguishing obvious traits of our modern definition of a cult, it is easy to draw similarities to the cult that is Facebook.

1. Easy to Join, Hard to Leave

Cults encourage you to join, letting you join at little or no cost, and help you out every step of the way. However, their interest is to grow in numbers and therefore will employ any tactics necessary to maintain your membership, such as intimidation or persuasion. Facebook acts in the exact same manner. All it takes is an email and a click of a button and you’re a full-patch member, but if you want to leave, you’ve got a long road ahead of you. Facebook has managed to create an over-complex and confusing account removal system which is likely to intimidate even the savviest of users. And if you do manage to delete your account, Facebook is always willing to take you back with a click of a button, no questions asked.
Continue reading 5 Ways Facebook Resembles A Real Cult

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