Google+ Gaining On Facebook

Google+ is doing what Google normally does. Win.

Customer profile-management provider Janrain offered its take on social login trends for the first quarter of 2014, which differed markedly from the conclusions provided by consumer-management-suite provider Gigya earlier this week on the same topic.

Janrain found that Facebook’s share of social logins was 42 percent in the first quarter, down 3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014, while Google Plus saw a 3 percent gain, to 38 percent, and Yahoo was up 1.5 percent.

Meanwhile, Gigya reported that Facebook was on the upswing, while Google Plus was fairly flat, and Yahoo was on the decline.

Other highlights of Janrain’s findings included:
Google Plus overtook Facebook and LinkedIn in terms of social logins on business-to-business sites, but its lead is narrow.
Facebook extended its wide lead on entertainment and gaming sites, reaching 66 percent of social logins.

Janrain said of its findings:

While its share decreased from 45 percent to 42 percent during the first quarter of 2014, Facebook maintains its long-standing lead as the most popular choice for social login. The first quarter of 2014 also saw Google continue to rise in popularity. With a 38 percent share of all social logins, Google has gradually continued to close the gap on Facebook for the past six consecutive quarters. Its popularity is at its highest level in three-and-a-half years.

What accounts for this rise in popularity? The continued emergence of Google Plus certainly plays a role. In addition, Google has made a strategic push to unify each of its services (Gmail, Google Plus, YouTube, Google Drive, Android, Google Play], to name a few) under a single Google identity. Consumers are using a single Google identity to access each of these services, which may have a positive impact on the value and equity they place in that identity. Social login preferences tend to closely reflect these consumer affinities, and as services become stickier for consumers, the identity used to access those services tends to follow suit.

Yahoo also experienced its largest single-quarter increase in preference in four years, with its share jumping 1.5 percent. As Yahoo seeks to evolve its business model and create new revenue streams to build off of its first-quarter success, its share of social logins improved 1.5 percent during the first quarter of 2014. This success may be coupled with a renewed vision toward promoting its own identity and growing consumer affinity for the company through rich media content. With Yahoo’s recent decision to remove the ability to access Yahoo services using your Facebook or Google identity, we look forward to seeing whether its share of social logins will continue to trend in a positive direction.

Readers: Why do you think the conclusions on social login trends by Janrain and Gigya differ so greatly?

What Would You Do?

There has been and still is a ton of talk about employers asking potential employees during an interview about their Social Media habits.

Some employers are even asking for their username and password so they can login and see what they are doing.

So let me pose this question for thought.


Your in the middle of the interview, knocking it out of the ballpark, feeling really good about how things are going, then the interviewer turns the monitor around so you can see it and says, "As you can see this is the Facebook login page." "We found your Facebook page but it is marked private so I need your username and password so we can see what you post."

What would you do?

I have seen many humorous answers but I want everyone to consider what would you say?
I seen great answers in my search but the best one I've seen is this one.

Accessing my Facebook account is tantamount to asking for information such as age, marital status, sexual orientation, etc that are attached to my profile, and which you are not permitted to ask me about in an interview. Therefore, I must conclude that current law makes it illegal for you to request my login information.


I have to say that I would deny them access to my account.


Someone I knew told me one day that his company set up a new social media policy that you can't do this or can't post that. They way the company wrote the policy it took away any freedom he had about posting on anything.

He then did something very funny. He unfriended everyone that he worked with and then sent out a company wide email.

He said I have unfriended all employees of ***** that was on my Facebook account so nobody has to see me violate the new social media policy.


Classic.

Twitter Profile Redesign Rolled Out

Twitter has rolled out the new web profile design. Here are the highlights.

Best Tweets: Tweets that have received more engagement will appear slightly larger, so your best content is easy to find.

Pinned Tweet: Pin one of your Tweets to the top of your page, so it’s easy for your followers to see what you’re all about.

Filtered Tweets: Now you can choose which timeline to view when checking out other profiles. Select from these options: Tweets, Tweets with photos/videos, or Tweets and replies.

LinkedIn Reaches 300 Million Users

LinkedIn reached a milestone this month hitting a massive 300 million users.

Here is their press release.


We are excited to announce that we reached a big milestone today: there are now more than 300 million LinkedIn members in the world! More than half of these members come from outside of the U.S., while there are 100 million members in the U.S. While this is an exciting moment, we still have a long way to go to realize our vision of creating economic opportunity for every one of the 3.3 billion people in the global workforce.

To get there, we are delivering personalized experiences built around members and their identity, network and knowledge. We believe this focus will give us the ability to better help each of our members achieve their professional goals. This strategic shift has already come to life through our content products. To give our members access to all business knowledge they need to be great at what they do, we have brought together content from millions of publishers through Pulse, Influencer posts from approximately 500 of the leading minds in business, and most recently, our millions of members, as we continue to roll out our publishing platform and expand LinkedIn Groups and SlideShare.

We know mobile is critical. Later this year, we are going to hit our mobile moment, where mobile accounts for more than 50 percent of all global traffic. Already, our members in dozens of locations including Costa Rica, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, use LinkedIn more on their mobile devices than on their desktop computers. Every day we see an average of 15 million profile views, 1.45 million job views and 44,000 job applications in over 200 countries through mobile.

In anticipation of the mobile moment, two years ago, we started developing multiple LinkedIn mobile apps to fit the different needs of our diverse members. Each of these apps is customized and tailored to a member-specific use case. As we expand our mobile app portfolio,such as our new SlideShare app, we’re also focused on bringing on top-notch partnerships with companies like Apple, Nokia, Samsung and others. You’ll see more strategic pairings throughout the course of this year.

We already have a strong presence around the world and will continue to invest in building out the experiences we offer to our members in key countries. Earlier this year, we expanded our presence in China with the launch of a beta version of our new Simplified Chinese site. Our goal is to connect the more than 140 million Chinese professionals with each other and the global workforce.

Our global footprint gives us the necessary elements to build the world’s first Economic Graph. As we continue to grow, we’ll be able to keep improving this valuable map of the connections between people, companies, jobs, skills, educational institutions and professional knowledge in the global economy.

As we’ve grown the value we deliver to our members has increased, the way they use our products has changed and our membership has become more diverse. The below infographic gives you a visual picture of how our network of professionals has grown and evolved over the last five years.

Twitter Going After More Advertising Business Through Apps

Twitter Inc took a significant step Thursday towards broaden its advertising business by offering mobile ads urging people to install apps on its social network as well as through MoPub, the mobile-advertising network it acquired last year.

As the mobile app economy grows, app developers have been willing to pay increasing amounts to advertise on major sites like Facebook to boost their app downloads.

Twitter said Thursday it could reach 1 billion unique mobile devices through its MoPub network, which places ads inside of hundreds of apps. Twitter, which acquired MoPub last year for roughly $350 million, reaches a more limited audience of 240 million users through its own Twitter.com Web site and mobile apps.

Twitter said it would allow developers to target their so-called app-install ads on Twitter, based on user interests. For example, a game publisher could promote its mobile games to Twitter users who have been identified as gamers.

Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has in the past repeatedly identified app-install ads as a significant source of revenue for the world's No. 1 social network, although Facebook has never disclosed the precise amount in its financial results.

Facebook Releases Nearby Friends

This is a cool feature from Facebook. Here is the press release:

Today we are beginning to roll out a new feature called Nearby Friends that you can choose to turn on. Nearby Friends helps you discover which friends are nearby or on the go.

If you turn on Nearby Friends, you’ll occasionally be notified when friends are nearby, so you can get in touch with them and meet up. For example, when you’re headed to the movies, Nearby Friends will let you know if friends are nearby so you can see the movie together or meet up afterward.

Nearby Friends is an optional feature. You can choose who can see if you’re nearby (for example: your friends, close friends, or a specific friends list) and you can turn it on and off at any time.

Sharing your location with Nearby Friends goes two ways — you and your friends both have to turn on Nearby Friends and choose to share with each other to see when you’re nearby. Your friends will only be able to see that you’re nearby if you share this info with them and vice versa.

Find your friends nearby and meet up

If you turn on Nearby Friends, you can also choose to share a precise location with the particular friends you choose for a set period of time, such as the next hour. When you share your precise location, the friend you choose will see exactly where you are on a map, which helps you find each other. Then you can meet up and spend time together.

See when your friends are traveling

When Nearby Friends is on, you can see when your friends are traveling if they’re also using this feature and sharing with you. You’ll be able to see the city or neighborhood they are in, including on their profile. When you see a friend visiting a place you’ve been, it’s the perfect opportunity to send a recommendation for a great restaurant. You can also make last-minute plans to meet up with a friend who happens to be in the same place you’re headed to.

LinkedIn's New Mobile App

Kurt Wagner reports this is the first mobile app for SlideShare; it allows users to scroll through a feed of slideshows and presentations uploaded by those they follow and connect with.

The feed on the Android app is personalized, meaning users can subscribe to certain categories like tech, finance, or news and politics. To view a slideshow, a user can swipe left or right to move between slides without ever leaving the feed. Users can also save or like slideshows, then come back to them later.

Almost half of LinkedIn's traffic comes via mobile (41%), and the company expects that number to reach 50% sometime in 2014. SlideShare is contributing to this figure; the company says that mobile views on SlideShare increased 223% last year.

The SlideShare app is LinkedIn's fifth app, and operates along the lines of LinkedIn's news reader app, Pulse, which also surfaces content based on categories and publications that users subscribe to. On SlideShare, selecting categories to follow is the first thing users do when opening the app.






SlideShare released its first app on Wednesday, which allows users to view slideshows and presentations on their phones.


Mashable reported that a new app was in the works from LinkedIn last week, but executives at the company were not specific on details. LinkedIn has adopted a "multi-app strategy," similar to Facebook's; the company plans to release a suite of standalone applications in hopes of capturing the attention of an users who are rapidly moving to mobile


LinkedIn's strategy around standalone apps focuses on one word: simplicity. The company tries to take its popular, existing services and build them out into mobile experiences, explained Parker Barrile, LinkedIn's VP of product for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, last week.


“Mobile apps work best when they are very focused on one specific use case or value proposition," Barrile added. "So whenever we see a use case among our members that we believe is meaningful enough or broadly based enough to merit its own app, we’ll build that app.”

For now, SlideShare is only available on Android, which you can download here. iOS users can sign up to be a beta tester for an iOS app, which is also in the works. Along with the app, SlideShare updated its mobile web version, allowing users to swipe between presentation slides. SlideShare users can also view their presentation looks on mobile before they upload it.

LinkedIn is creeping toward the moment when half its users visit via mobile, and standalone apps like SlideShare are expected to help carry them there.