Facebook has such a compelling power to prove one’s online identity. Individuals have recognized this fact. Businesses have recognized this fact. Individuals find Facebook as an easy to use and easy to connect tool. You can connect with your friends both current and old. You can update all the details happening at your end and at the same time know what is happening with your friends. No matter where they are present in this global village, you can greet and share photos, music and videos. You can re-connect with your old school friends and thus revise relations and can get into those thrilling moments.

With more than 600 million active users across the world, Facebook offers unique possibility to businesses through ‘pages’. This facility has been utilized by businesses as it helps them reach their customers in less time and also helps them reach the most prospective audience. Businesses have a wide variety of options to promote their products.

A business can launch an application that brings its services closer to Facebook users. Instead of opening a separate web page, users can get updates from the company they are following. Mobile applications further enhance the visibility and reach of business. As smartphone revolution is transforming the lives of millions of people around the world, timely opportunities are utilized by Facebook by launching free applications to entice users.

The strong backbone behind the growth of the company is the team members of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer of Facebook would like to enhance Facebook to make it a better destination for communication and sharing of information. Facebook is still able to attract and retain users because of launch of innovative features all through the past 8 years. The key to the success can be attributed to the innovative and extensive connectivity features. Christopher Cox, Vice President of Product, is successful in bringing a decent interface to users by introducing innovative designs. Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer is successful in her assignment in launching advertising campaigns carrying out day to day operations. With other dedicated team members who are highly talented in their respective domains much in the lines of Google team, Facebook is able to move ahead and withstand stiff competition in this highly competitive social networking arena.

In addition to advertising and sharing features, Facebook offer games and chatting activities. It has added entertainment, sharing and business. Many mobile phones are also launched through which Facebook can be accessed by pressing a single button. Facebook offers an API for developers which helpthem develop useful applications that can be integrated with websites.

You will be really encouraged to know that there are many people who have similar kind of interests as you do have. You will also get inspiration from someone who is interested in the same kind of things that you are interested. Pinterest is the like-minded people’s club. The social bookmarking site is generating large number of readers to retailers’ sites in a progressive manner. Pinterest is an easy to use creative site. You can share whole lot of your favorite projects through this innovative interface.

You will not be over-connected or spammed as happens with the majority of social networkingsites. Even though the site is two year old, it is growing at a fast pace. You can express your ideas through pin boards or bulletin boards. A number of categories are available on the website. You can organize and share information through pin boards which are nothing but online bulletin boards. As a member you can access user friendly bookmarking tool, ‘Pin It’. It facilitates you to store bookmarks and other information through online and offline also. You can even download mobile application which facilitates you to access information and share with others.

As per the survey undertaken by Experian Hitwise, more than 58% of the users on Pinterest are women. There was fourfold increase in traffic in the last quarter of 2011. It has reported more than 7.51 million unique visitors in the month of December, 2011 alone. The site has generated a lot of traffic for retailers. It stands in fifth place in terms of number of visitors sent to apparel retail industry. Pinterest is successful in mobilizing non-tech savvy users. The site is under criticism that most of the users who land on the site are passive users. A majority of active users (influencers) are present on Facebook and Twitter. Interestingly, the members that are glued to Pinterest are not much engaged with other social networking sites. The site widely promotes leisure related topics. It is a great way to find information on wedding, recipe and travel related topics.

More and more number of visitors is checking Pinterest before visiting the retailer’s websites. It is easy to start your journey with Pinterest. You can share interesting links and images by pinning. These can be repinned by your followers. It is also possible to share these links through Facebook and twitter. After creating your account, you can take advantage of driving traffic to your personal website or site where you sell your products. Most of the referral traffic in the web world is generated through search engines. Out of total search engine traffic, Google occupies 62% followed by Yahoo and Bing.

As more and more retailers are using social networking sites like Pinterest, trading community should study the impact on their business. Pinterest can be used to promote your business. It can also be used to promote a lifestyle. It can be used as a focus group, as crowdsource and to run contests. It is a great way to inspire your team members in business.

There are some really easy-to-follow conventional processes to do so.

Why do You Need Your Chosen Social Network?

Every once in a while, one needs to stop and think about the various social networks that he/she is participating regularly or vaguely in, because each of these connections surely make their priority felt by consuming a certain amount of time out of one’s life. So, in a world which has already embraced the concept of “time is money”, one cannot afford to keep wasting their time on trashy and pointless social networks. Hence, the first step towards organizing everyone’s social life is carefully analyzing the utility served by the social networks they are attached to and asking their selves the vital question of ‘why’ they should keep using that social network.

If one merely joins a social network because his/her peers are following it religiously, it only serves boosting his / her ego. So, it’s surely time to think twice about it. Questions like if the social connections are just being used as a path to promote oneself 24/7 also helps one in self-realization. If one really wants to grow into an expert at social media marketing then he / she needs to pay attention to his / her clients / customers to keep their online connections with them alive, for these referrals serve as great future prospects for one’s business.

The Keyword is “Balance”

Organizing one’s social calendar for 2012 makes sure that one has the necessary time for treating each and every social connection more or less equally. If the important online connections are left without valuable content on a long term basis they would get irritated and stop providing any kind of support. Thus, the major thing to remember if one wants to avoid such unwanted circumstances is that one needs to find a way to balance their social life perfectly.

Constant Evaluation of Social Media Schedule

Every experiment needs trying and testing. After developing a roughly sketched schedule, one should aim towards consistently sticking at it for at least a month straight. At the end of the month he/she should look back and evaluate the schedule to see if it is appropriate or it needs to be tweaked a bit.

A perfect social schedule should serve these following purposes -

• The requirements of one’s social communities are amply met.
• All the essential goals are accomplished.
• One’s individual business and work style is satisfied.

Let us find how Twitter has emulsified journalism.

Twitter has been spotted as an easy to use platform by journalists to cover news and latest happenings up to the last second. With Twitter in hand as a reporting tool or updating tool, you no longer will wait till the break of the night, to check the newspaper or television news channel to get the information about the news that you are closely following. For many journalists, Twitter has become a very useful tool to report events almost instantaneously. This helps their followers to keep them in loop with all the updates and subsequently make them follow the main article through newspaper or television or blog that carries news, views and analysis.

When we see the recent political unrest in countries like Egypt and Tunisia and crisis built-up through natural disasters in various parts of the globe, Twitter filled the gap when all kinds of normal modes of communication updates failed to provide latest information on the ground. When a detailed study was conducted on the campaign launched by public in Egypt to voice their opinion and thus bring pressure on the government, it revealed how dramatic was the flow of information from one location to another location on the web. Some tweets are re-tweeted and they are also connected with other blogs and social media sites like Facebook, etc.

Ordinary public who are real witnesses are able to provide information through tweets helping people know the ground reality. The available technology in terms of inter-connectivity of various electronic gadgets and smart applications present in mobile phones has made it easy to share news through text, maps and videos. The source for information generation is broadened in the new age as compared to the availability of information to select few in earlier days. The change is vast from broadcasted news to digital networked news.

Twitter has benefitted not only the public to get information but also journalists to excel in their profession. Journalists are able to network with other journalists to share news, views and analysis. This kind of networking will help them grow in their profession and they will be able to cover news in a better way than ever before. This kind of setup was not possible in earlier days and journalists can engage their fans as well to know their likes and dislikes. The feedback or suggestions made by ordinary public will be a certain motivating factor for journalists so that they can deliver news as per the audience’ expectations.

It is very important to notice what kind of news is making sense and is being appreciated by readers. Twitter promptly takes the place of notebooks and mobiles used by earlier generation of journalists and offer a much better and versatile platform to generate and report news.

You can take reasonable advantage through circles in Google+ which cannot be achieved through Facebook or Twitter. Mere creation of a circle for focus group will not serve the purpose. You should have an objective behind the creation of a group. You should focus on the objective to achieve the same by all means. The participants in focus group should actively discuss the pros and cons of the theme presented by you. Quite naturally, you might want to know whom to bring-in to this circle. The focus group may consist of your ardent fans or prominent customers. Their unbiased feedback, comments, suggestions and for that matter, any other ‘think out of the box’ thought will definitely help you bring useful insight after the entire exercise.

Sometimes you may want to induce your visitors to participate in focus groups in a big way. Offering your valuable professional consultancy service free of cost for the members of focus group for a limited number of days or sale of product or service at heavily discounted price will help you reward participating members. The premium service offered by you will give you back many times of your investment. This is a great opportunity to know the current status of your blog or business and to shape its destiny. As you are prepared with a set of queries, you can share the same with the participating members one by one. It will be a remarkable revelation to you when you get a feedback that a particular user-friendly feature made visitors to stay and learn on your site.

The discussion goes in the ambience where the members are free to share their likes and dislikes of your presentation. They will share what kind of features or topics they are expecting and what feature will help them to introduce many new visitors to your blog.

Another important aspect in the formation of focus group is the restriction of the number of members in a group. Ten to twelve members will better serve the purpose. You can ask your members to respond in as many numbers of words they want without placing any restriction. You will be able to compile more information by not narrowing down your answers to simple yes or no. After successful engagement with your focus group, you will be able to get vast information on various aspects. You will get to know how new visitors are coming to your site. You will know what kind of keywords they are using to know about articles of their interest. You will know what kind of mobiles they are using and how much percentage of your visitors are depending on mobile phones to access content on your blog. You will know what kind of browsers visitors are using, what operating system they are using, what other familiar blogs they are following, what social media they are participating, what kind of niche possibilities are there as per their guess, how your blog impacted their lives, their social and family background, their profession, etc.

All the above information will help you dig deep into the process to renovate your site to attract more visitors from all corners and thus grow more in business.

If you think otherwise, let us know.

Let us find how these skills have created demand for employment globally.

The demand for cloud computing is growing at the rate of 61% annually. In many instances the job offer placed on various online sourcing platforms has to be extended beyond 44 days which is the average display time for any job. Cloud based technologies will move businesses to the next level. Hence deployment of cloud based technologies and personnel to look after to deal with cloud based technologies are need of the hour. There are companies like HP that have launched courses to train up candidates to fill this gap. It is also important to engage competent personnel so that the services will not be disturbed for businesses.

For businesses, cloud computing will cut down their expenditure and for users it will simplify their lives. The beauty of cloud computing is its offer to utilize services as and when required and in the amounts a business can utilize. Thus, for a business it is an attractive choice. As a matter of fact, cloud is a set of hardware, software, services, storage and interfaces. This total set offers integrated services to your enterprise virtually located somewhere and running on round the clock basis. Small businesses can cut down their cost as they cannot afford to manage dedicated infrastructure and man power to achieve a very high level of service that can be offered on round the clock basis.

Growing and big businesses also can manage these services offered by third parties by involving a team of professionals who will look after the deployment and management of cloud computing services. Businesses can save substantially as they can pay only to the volume of services they are utilizing and not on a fixed basis. The companies that are providing cloud based services should gain the trust of potential clients by being able to address various security and privacy issues.

As more and more awareness is created about cloud computing among the business community, the demand raised high for people possessed with these skills. It is apparent that there is a huge gap between the available number of cloud based positions and the competent personnel available in the market. The recent boom in this direction has added fuel to the fire. Recruitment of candidates for Cloud computing is a complex task as the requirements change from one business to another business and from one location to another location.

The skills are expected not only from IT experts but also from professionals from other domains such as customer support, sales and marketing. In fact, the demand for candidates possessing cloud computing skills is more from other than IT domain. In spite of all around efforts to recruit through various online and offline sources, the gap may still widen as the requirement of professionals is increasing at 70% every year. As an alternative, companies may come up to the point of recruiting and training them up as per their requirements.

About.com is a great place to get decent reward for your articles. However, you should be a specialist in at least one particular domain. For example, if you are well versed with mobile phones, you should be able to write about various kinds of informative articles on mobile phones. For freelancers, it is a great opportunity to work from the comforts of their home and work at their own convenient timings. Serious aspirants can register on the website and should go through the testing process which will be in many rounds. Once you are selected for the job, you will be guided on the ways to prepare articles. Along with article submission, you will be assigned other tasks as well.

‘Sponsored Reviews‘ is a site where you will be paid for the articles that you write. There are two kinds of registrations on this site.They are advertisers and bloggers. Bloggers have to register, verify their account and should update their profile. Bloggers should own at least one blog and the blog should fulfill certain eligibility criteria. If you meet the requirements mentioned on their site, you can participate in writing and when your articles are published, you will be paid. If you are really talented in presenting unique content and wish your voice heard on a broad horizon, then 451press.com is the right place for you. The doors are always open for infusion of fresh blood that gives fresh meat to the audience. As blogs of diverse topics are covered under a single hut, you have ample chance to prove your capability.

Reviewme.com offers excellent monetary benefits. You will be paid $20 to @200 for the reviews on products and services promoted by various websites. Quite often, start-up companies will find it difficult to manage sufficient publicity or traffic to their site.
If you are already handing a successful site that draws a good number of visitors per day, then you have the potential to grab this offer. Advertisers will approach reviewme.com and you can approach those advertisers through reviewme.com. You will be able to bid the price for the review and if you are successful in winning the bid, you can make money by delivering a review on your site. Advertisers will benefit from your sites’ traffic and promotions. By registering at linkpost, bloggers can make money by writing reviews. You will have access to eagerly waiting advertisers for want of preparation of review. Advertisers have more options to get a review completely adapted to their requirements. You can participate with linkpost as a partner and get paid up to 50% of the amount for articles written and published on their site.

PayPerPost.com offers intelligent way to make money. Here, a number of advertisers will be waiting for an opportunity to sponsor content of their choice. Bloggers can make substantial deals with these advertisers and present content as per the requirements of advertisers. Ultimately you will be paid for each post that you are writing for the advertiser.

In addition to the revenue generated in traditional ways, as a blogger you can earn more by writing reviews and content for other websites. You will be able to get new stream of visitors from other websites also.

The area of social media marketing is rife with the jostling of the top contenders and the start up of social media sites. Technological advancement in this sector is influenced by the competitive features introduced by the other sites and more importantly, by popular demands put forth by different sections of the web audience. Google+ is comparatively quite new in the social media sector; however, it had a running start and has been going strong with continuous advanced features introduced and the site on constant modification to be at par with the other close competitions (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blokube, Digg etc.).
The most recent direction of developments on Google+ has been towards orienting the service to be better compatible to business profiles and promotions. Here is a detailed look at the course of the progress -

Google+ is Merging Social Media with Power of Search

The fact that Google backs Google+ plays a huge role in the development of the social media site as a unique factor for consideration in search engine ranking. However, this is not just true for Google+. Twitter has also collaborated with Google in this regards. Therefore, if you are persistent with your twitter handle, your relevant tweets will also be accounted during search indexing by Google. Facebook is in collaboration with Microsoft Bing, for this very criterion. However, the impact of search engine ranking on businesses makes this criterion a near major necessity in their choice of social platform. It is true that Google+ has targeted business profiles, especially as an endeavor to trump Facebook with their business fan pages features. To aid this approach, Google+ has introduced multi member circles, business profile pages, and related badges that you can link back to the official website of your company.

Direct Impact of Google+ on Businesses pertaining to Social Media Marketing

The very reason for social media marketing is to garner web audience exposure. While popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter are extremely progressive when it comes to networking, they are in some ways lacking concerning search engine optimization. Twitter collaborates with Google, but Twitter collects seemingly low percentage of the total traffic statistics on the social media sites.

Google is multi dimensional. The many sub aspects of the search engine giant (Orkut, Picasa, Google wave etc.), encompass a lot of target traffic and from varying fields. However, all of these aspects have failed to cultivate the stature of online presence, which the recent boom in social media marketing has experienced.

Google+ is a direct contender in this particular field. Due to its late arrival, it has some grounds to cover still in terms of a social media top site. However, in collaboration with Google Adwords; it has definitely solidified its position as the social media site connected with collection of organic traffic to your business site. This is precisely the reason why Google+has come up with the barrage of new features to entice businesses to start up profile pages on the site.

The only significant disadvantage in this regards is the site’s inattention towards identity verification when businesses sign up for pages. As a result, almost anyone can open up a business page for individual company, regardless of their relation to that particular company. The site is also advancing on the features that will let business pages include multiple members in a group conversation (Google+ circle). In retrospect, collecting +1s on your business profile page on Google+, will amount to a noticeable increase in organic traffic to your site and directly reflect on your site’s position on the SERPs.

Hackers are tech savvy people of highest degree. They know the ways and means to deploy new technologies and tinker with existing technologies. Therefore these are highly knowledgeable people who are not exposed to the society as happens with technology experts working in major software development companies or authorities who decide the modalities to work with various technologies. There are two types of hackers. They are ethical and non-ethical. Ethical hackers will not intrude into the private space of individuals or companies. They will not try to steal other’s information or control and monitor your activities in computer or network.

Ethical hackers contribute to the society in developing protection software such as anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. They have all the technology in their hands to run a parallel network much in the lines of internet. Non-ethical hackers work against the interests of public and they are involved in to fraudulent activities. It is similar to physical encroachment of private space of others or stealing. In fact, they are a menace to society. SOPA will be detrimental to the activities of both ethical and non-ethical hackers. Hence, hackers’ world has serious plans to run their own networks. In this connection, they are planning to go to the extent of launching their own satellites. One of the options explored by hackers is to launch satellites through balloons into earth’s low altitudes. Aviation experts rule out the possibility of achieving the launching effect without using a rocket which gives the main thrust for the body to be injected into earth’s object so that it will continue to rotate in the designated orbit.

There is widespread criticism on SOPA not only among hackers but also among the interest user communities. For the most, SOPA seems to be influenced and reflected by film producing industry’s lobbyists. The measures that are going to be introduced are more to protect the interests of recording companies. There are number of acts to safeguard the copyrights of audio and video recordings. In fact, they can strengthen those acts if they are any loopholes or practical difficulties in their implementation as per the change in technologies in usage and distribution of recordings.

SOPA should not limit the fundamental rights of citizens i.e., freedom in every sphere. Those who are involved in producing the draft and implementation should have the fresh blood of internet and changing technologies so that the act will include and protect the interests of millions of people across the globe. If not, those who want freedom to the maximum potential extent may explore alternative ways making them go to the extent of launching their own satellites, protocols and standards and be able continue to enjoy their freedom in a different way.

What are your thoughts?

UK newspaper, The Register sources close to Microsoft, this week confirmed the rumors that circulated during the month of June where customer’s data were being striped between the pair. By the process of striping, the data accessing speed is increased and there is no need to rely on a single device or service. Sources say, that, in order to reduce the risk of depending on one single supplier, Apple has selected two providers since it already suffered from unpleasant online services from a single external service provider. It has to be noted that the level of maturity and services differ a lot when a comparison is done between Amazon and Microsoft.

A cost of approximately $1 billion would be required to build the infrastructure of cloud services. At present, Apple doesn’t have a bunch of high speed and high density servers. However, with a massive data center under construction in North Carolina, that is worth $500 million, a part of the cloud service could be taken over here. Still it surprises me, why Amazon and Microsoft are apparently mum on this subject.

In the present scenario, Apple’s technology is not well suited for a cloud type system. It is flexibility and provisioning that separates ‘Cloud’ from a just of bunch of servers. For instance, if you take a normal server host, you can get a server in a fairly short order, in case you need a bunch, you’ll have to wait for some time till the hardwares are ordered and you have to pay regardless of usage. With Amazon’s Elastic Cloud server is available in minutes and you have the option to pay more based on usage since idle resources don’t have to take up resources. Now, this is possible because it is all virtual.

They may even fix it since there was a time when they liked AIX or they may even build a data centre with someone else`s technology. This will take a lot of time and only Microsoft and Amazon are the big ones which can deliver it. So, this can be a reason for them to use Microsoft and Amazon.

Another possibility is that using AWS and Azure, they can develop a CDN (content-delivery network) since it has already used Akamai and Limelight as CDN’s in the past. This allows developers to deliver high-bandwidth content more quickly and efficiently by placing delivery points closer to users; this will essentially speed up all sorts of data transfer that go through their CDN.

When Microsoft was questioned regarding this, they replied stating that they don’t reveal the customer details. But, when it comes to ‘Cloud’ privacy is always in question. Sometimes, it baffles me where I think that since Apple runs on beta version currently and the service appears to only run in iMessage on Azure; is Apple still deciding its host platform?

Let us know, if you think differently.

Sending a picture through twitter using your basic mobile phone is quite simple. The first step is to type the text that you would do normally. Then, attach the picture and send to Twitter. As soon as you drop the picture into the message text box, it will vanish. Your basic phone should have at least MMS capability to achieve this functionality. In this process you need not depend on any application to send photos from your mobile. The photo dropped into the message will be converted into MMS. When you click on send, the photo will be removed and the photo is shared on Twitter. The photos are stored in the photo bucket. You will be able to check the photos later when you login to the twitter. It is a great service from twitter and you will be able to share a photo instantly with your friends from your mobile. It can be noticed as a new speedup measure in communication channel.

However, there is a trade off in the resolution of pictures. You cannot expect a high resolution that is possible through flickr. The new feature serves the needs of basic phone users as they will be able to send photos directly from their mobiles without using any application. Others who do not want to use applications to send photos can also use this new feature. Another segment of people that can utilize this new feature are people who depend on slow speed connections. The new feature may not be cherished by professional photographers as they always expect a very high resolution which is not possible with the newly launched feature. The new feature is functional from the past three months.

This feature is available only on select carriers (mobile service providers) worldwide. Twitter is working with other carriers across the world to deliver the feature through many more carriers in the coming weeks. Those who are using this feature should enter the Twitter status update number and it varies from country to country. By adding this new feature, Twitter will definitely improve its user base as more and more people would like to give a try for this new feature. As pictures convey better than words and as more and more people are habituated to capture photos quite often through mobile phones, the new feature will definitely be a great boon to mobile users to share with their friends and acquaintances quite easily.

What it allows – This new button will allow Facebook users to establish a one sided connection with other profiles or websites, through their Facebook profile. It functions and works like the ‘follow’ button of Twitter and allows you to view updates of the subscribed account, without sharing your account. Furthermore, in this option, one need not wait for the other person’s approval of sharing the account (like confirming ‘friend request’ on Facebook) and all the personal information remains unrevealed.

This ‘subscribe’ button has a few advantages as well. They are listed below -

1. Get more subscribers – This subscription system has been extended to the Comments Box plug-in, which enables blogs and website owners to incorporate a Facebook based commentary system on their sites and web pages. This feature shall also allow the comment posters to get more subscribers.

2. Get all Updates – Very similar to the ‘like’ button of Facebook, which allowed creating a bookmark of any webpage on somebody’s social networking account, this ‘subscribe’ button also offers web publishers to add the content of their fans and readers on Facebook. With this subscription system, every post or update made by an author or the user will be shared with the subscriber and he or she can view it with their news feed.

3. “Subscribe” vs. “Follow” – Since, this new ‘subscribe’ button of Facebook is largely similar to the ‘follow’ button of Twitter, and acts and functions in a similar manner; it is expected it will heighten rivalry between the two sites. However, the ‘subscribe’ button has added advantages over the ‘follow’ button of Twitter; with the follow button you can get connected with only one user but the ‘subscribe’ button can link you up to a chain of users.

4. Methods of Adding – There are three different ways of adding this subscribe button of Facebook: firstly, with the ad of an extended Facebook markup language code; secondly, through HTML 5-compliant markup, and finally, with an iframe. For further reference, one can consult the help centre of Facebook.

5. Reading of Journals and Newspapers – Although, this ‘subscribe’ button is primarily designed to establish a one sided connection with your admired personality – writer, film star, politician, and so on, it has more functions to serve as well. It brings good news for publishers and journalists as readers can now read the latest version of journals or newspapers with this subscription system.

6. Generation of More Traffic – Due to the viral quality of this ‘subscribe’ button, more traffic is generated on the webpage which is a good feature for promotional activities.

Thus, it is evident that this latest initiative of Facebook is a path-breaking activity in the field of social networking. It has myriad purposes to serve, starting from viewing updates of favorite personalities to reading latest articles from publishers and journalists to promoting brands and services by generating traffic.

It thus, is the latest gift in this Christmas from Facebook!

Image Credits: via FactoryJoe on Flickr

The news site is smarter when compared to the RSS reader. The news is refreshed for every 60 seconds. Comunitee has promised a writer regarding this. The greatest advantage in this site is, that, there is no need to connect to a Twitter or Facebook account to share what you read. The site quotes, “Click follow, share and tweet for every story you find interesting. Oh, yeah, we don’t choose new topics for you. Your news is always your news“.

Backed by $170K in angel funding and led by serial entrepreneur Dan Daszkowiski, who founded BusinessMart, Inc told VatorNews, that, he is not looking forward to replace Facebook and Twitter. He insisted on news that gets directly into real-time and people can people can be additionally influenced by others who have similar interests. Though it is available on your web browser right now, the site has planned for the launch of a mobile web application in the HTML5 version in the coming months. At present, the New York based company is looking into ways so that it allows users to import their RSS feeds in such a manner that the users of future will solely depend on Comunitee for the pleasure of reading.

Comunitee is unique because of three reasons, which are -

• Explore, discover and share specific topics which people have as their common interest.
• The site is organic. That is the news that you care is brought to you. The more you read and add people you add, there is a fine-tune of search that takes place.
• The non-intrusive nature where in there is no need to pause the reading in order to vote or check five to six social media buttons, the site lets you to read news in real-time and there is no need to be dependant on friends to share the information you read.

Daszkowiski has always been obsessed with the thought of changing the way the way people consume news. To make online news, he says it has to be -

• Less fragmented
• More fun
• More social
• Less work for the user

Consolidating everything Comunitee has been developed with organization like the Google+ circles and frictionless sharing. Though some feel that this site is similar to StumbleUpon where the content is organized based on your taste.

Though the concept is interesting, the different aspects of social web may make it more complicated. Let us know, what you think!

So, is this the end of 18+ age limit on Google+?

The age options in the page include “Any Google+ user” and “users 18 and over”. The second option may probably be used if users under 18 can someday have access to this service as it is restricted to the “minimum age” or older. If Google+ finds any user below 13 years of age, their account will be deleted within 30 days. Initially many Google+ users were surprised at the launch of this site which lacked non-inclusion of an age group known to share lots of contents including videos, photos, posts etc. But now, it is evident that the option will someday become available, while still maintaining the page restrictions on subjects such as alcohol and tobacco to minors.

In a discussion, a Google employee said, “We won’t be able to allow users under 18-years-old into field trial until we are confident that we have the right teen safety features in place. We currently have no plans to open to users who are under 13“. Though I found some angry posts regarding the age restriction, some people argue stating that Google+ is competing with Facebook to increase its number of users as 18% of Facebook users are under 18 years. Remember how Facebook was limited to college students who had an invite which was later offered to college students without an invite. Later it moved to highschoolers without an invite. Now everyone can have a Facebook account.

According to the TechCrunch post, the writer doesn`t seem to be happy with minors entering the site. He states that this is not a wise move by Google. Adding to that he said, Google has squandered its initial growth momentum and it will never attain the wildfire spread of Facebook. Many Google+ users seem to enjoy the lack of minors as they have been able to create a industry based demographics which is kind of like a cross link between LinkedIn and Facebook.

However, by allowing the 13-17 demographic will allow Google+ to create a strong business presence. Many tech savvy teenagers also welcome this decision of Google+. Initially they were all a little worried with the age restriction imposed on the site. This smart move by Google hopes to keep a positive approach on press and will turn Google+ into a more mature environment. The quality of content is far superior here when compared to any other social network. Though it was initially targeted for the “Most influential people in the society”, it seems that now the site is gearing up to opening it to all users. Though some may find it weird to be on the same network that has lot of teens, many social networks still find the ‘teen-feel’ but Google+ has a mature feel.

This move of including younger users could be a significant factor towards helping Google+ to succeed over the long term.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Colour into the Tablet market can be an answer to Amazon’s kindle fire, as felt by analysts. The 7″ nook colored tablet should be closer to kindle fire both in price and functionality. The current nook colored e-reader costs $249 whereas kindle fire is tagged at $199. The nook can clear its way if it can come out at less than $199 and if it can offer more than kindle fire’s features. Amazon is quite successful in targeting average users with its kindle fire.

It is difficult for nook to head on with either Apple or Amazon. As per the words of Lance Strate, Professor at Fordham University, Barnes & Noble is listed in B-category compared to Amazon which fares in A-category. It is speculated that B & N may strike a deal with Microsoft to have a major push in the market. It is also likely that B & N may come with enhanced functionalities to trade better than kindle fire.

The education market has great potential for tablet consumption. A low cost tablet with Wi-Fi is a great boon for students to access and disseminate information from and through various resources. Apple’s strategy aptly fits into this eco system by having established its relations with educational publishers. As of now, it is highly difficult to implement the same strategy by B & N as it has to cross two important barriers. The first one is, it should be able to present a tablet at less than $199 and secondly, it should prove its capability in presentation of feature rich product that can outperform Apple and kindle fire. There is no competition for B & N from Apple as Apple always targets premium segment being well established in the market.

Nook has better storage and memory capacity than kindle fire. Having a higher storage capability will let you possess and manage large volumes of content and having a higher memory capacity will let you experience faster audio and video streaming. You can also switch easily between applications. Another advantage with Nook is, the ability to download and use applications from Android marketplace. Kindle fire can support its own applications only.

The android 2.1 powered nook colored tablet comes with 16 GB of internal storage. The external memory can be extended up to 32 GB. It supports Wi-Fi and microSD. The tablet may pose as a strong bet for entry level android tablets. The nook is not branded for a particular segment of consumers. Hence, it may be captured by a wide range of audience.

There is no doubt that, there is a growing number of tablets sales month after month. However, it appears that these figures are bloated to get the attention of potential customers.

Ripples can be zoomed in and zoomed out for better view. The post’s sharing progression is represented by arrows and every user is represented with a circle. The overall appearance is similar to a splash in a pool of water, thus denotes a ripple. Ripples help you analyze the spread and the speed of a message. You can push the ripple button to play the ripple spread from the initial splash to the current moment. A graph will project the frequency of shares and also highlights the rise and fall of shares. By checking the spread in graphical and ripple format, you can find the influence of a particular user in spreading the message. Influencers play a vital role in the spread of message. These will also become targets of advertising agencies in future. You can zoom in large circles to follow the path until you reach the tail end.

The information ripples provide is crucial for internet marketers. Advertising agencies can focus on reaching potential users which spread the message fast. Thanks to Google for letting the data to public which will convince both users and advertisers in adopting Google+ as a means for promotion of products and services. From individual usage point of view, Google+ Ripple lets you relive your history of comments, conversations and shares in ripple format. As per some expert social media observers, ripple seems reincarnation of “Google Waves“, especially the ‘playback’ feature. Playback feature in waves helped users catch the nuance that had already made circles with friends. Playback feature help you unwind and rewind the past conversation history. As you are able to trace the entire history there will be no room for confusion in grasping the message.

Another noteworthy feature announced by Google is “Google+ Creative Kit“, which allows you edit, crop, resize and rotate photos right on Google+ interface. Google has quietly integrated the image editing software, PicniK that it had acquired last year. By offering spooky feature (targeting Halloween) along-with the photo competition held last month, Google+ is all set to create ripple in real world as well. Along-with the basic photo editing tools available with Google+, creative kit will take photo editing to the next level.

As per Google, ripple is still in the initial phase which will be well groomed later after taking the feedback and suggestions from users. Google+ Ripple can be compared to Facebook’s Timeline. However, Facebook’s Timeline has a definite edge over ripples as timeline can hold more data and more features. Ripple should evolve more to convince brands that the amount they invest will reap more.