GeoSocial Universe

The Socio-Cyber Universe

Since the Big-Bang of the cyber world, internet becoming public during 90’s, the cyber universe expanding with increasing growth rate. The infographic by JESS3 agency visualizes the status of the current social networks and points to the emergence of new social platforms such as friendster, badoo, besides the well known titans such as Facebook, Skype, Twitter.

GeoSocial Universe

Especially, if we compare the data to the 2010 version of the info-graphic, very interesting points show up:

  • We see that Skype with 663 million users, is ahead of Facebook in the registered user count. That is an important rationale behind Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype. However, we have to note that Facebook with more than 500 million active users, is still ahead vs Skype with about 180 million active users in terms of active usage. In this regards, we can still clearly say, that Facebook is the biggest active social network.
  • In webmail networks, we see Hotmail leading followed by Yahoo and Gmail.
  • Myspace appears to have passed the point of no return. With a steady decline, it’s gonna be hard for the company for sale to find a new buyer.
  • Twitter is growing rapidly.
  • The “made in china” version of Facebook, Qzone, is soon to reach its original.
  • Some mobile device oriented location based services networks are still the smaller links of the socio-cyber universe, but Google Latitude and Foursquare show some remarkable growth.
  • The mobile device market is continuing the exponential growth, the increase is in billion levels

 

GeoSocial Universe 2010

Facebook Ecosystem

Facebook has always been in the spot light somehow since its kick-off and it never stops to amaze us with its growth rate.  From 2004 til 2011 the company increased its headcount approx. 50% every year and has about 2000 employees as of today.

However, the impact factor of Facebook is not the its own economy, but rather the eco-system it created around itself. In this regards, since one of the most strategic movements of the company, to open the Facebook API to 3rd party developers in 2009, the job listings including the Facebook keyword increased 245% according to SimplyHired reports. These listings involve mostly non-engineering positions, as well as engineering positions, including a variety of domains such as application development, data analysis, marketing and PR.

If we analyze the numbers, we see an incredible growth and even more important an increasing growth rate. Today, there are more than 550 000 active Facebook applications. Considering it took only 4 years to reach that count, this is pretty huge. However, it is even more striking how much added value these application bring. Even if only Zynga is considered, which is a social gaming company significantly fueled by Facebook, its value is estimated to be around 7 billion $. Another example is Facebook fueled social match making company Snap Interactive, which doubles the 2009 revenues and lists 6.7 million $s revenues in 2010. Quite remarkable!

facebook ecosystem

As it seems, while Twitter is still trying to figure out a profitable business model, Facebook is already in a very different page.

 

Source: http://it-jobs.fins.com/Articles/SB130514803310615197/The-Facebook-Job-Engine?link=FINS_hp

– this post has been published in dijitolog

 

Facebook Town-hall Meeting

Facebook hosted an online, live townhall meeting with USA president Obama in Palo Alto headquarters. This event was very important for both Facebook and Obama. From the day he was elected, presidents poll results indicated decline. For the re-election campaign the utilization of Facebook platform is a significant move as it features over 155 million users in USA with 62% under the age 35. Even people in my network who devotedly supported “Obama for Change” campaign are far from the excitement in 2008.

Although it was not covered in the video published, Zuckenberg greeted the USA president Obama, referring to 19 million followers on his Facebook page, “Welcome home president”. The opening speech of the president explains the rationale of this meeting very well:

The main reason we wanted to do this is, first of all, because more and more people, especially young people, are getting their information through different media.  And obviously what all of you have built together is helping to revolutionize how people get information, how they process information, how they’re connecting with each other.

And historically, part of what makes for a healthy democracy, what is good politics, is when you’ve got citizens who are informed, who are engaged.  And what Facebookallows us to do is make sure this isn’t just a one-way conversation; makes sure that not only am I speaking to you but you’re also speaking back and we’re in a conversation, were in a dialogue.

And historically, part of what makes for a healthy democracy, what is good politics, is when you’ve got citizens who are informed, who are engaged.  And what Facebookallows us to do is make sure this isn’t just a one-way conversation; makes sure that not only am I speaking to you but you’re also speaking back and we’re in a conversation, were in a dialogue.

And really Obama continued with a warm tone to address questions ranging from economy to immigration, education, health care, partly picked from the web, partly from the Facebook employees among the crowd.

From Facebook’s perspective, the largest social network did the first move hosting this dialogue to bridge the internet with the world of politics, definitely adding to its brand value. Different than the conventional media, Facebook audience interacted over the web and become a contributor of this town-hall. Thinking of internet as a factor democratizing the world (literally), social networks such as Facebook, abstracting and virtualizing our identity promise a great potential. Just to give an idea, think of virtualizing elections or referendums, where people can very efficiently represent themselves with an e-government social network infrastructure.

This is a new era. Just like the corporate firms are one step closer to their customers with the social media, the politicians are reaching their voters through Facebook, Twitter, Youtube much faster. As a leader very well connected to the social media, we will see if Obama can prevail again in the 2012 elections adding new “friends”.

– this post has been published in dijitolog