My definition of Social Networks - why Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and App.net have authorization being here

App.net - the newest of all activities to "beat" Facebook, to be different, to be the "better" social network. Watching my and others habits, there is finally no "best" or even "better" network.

Let's start with Facebook. For sure it has the biggest audience which means it is and has to be for the masses. It has to serve the most common ground of social interaction, which is having fun and sharing private stuff with a peer group - your friends & colleagues. That's it - Facebook is for leisure.

We have Twitter. Twitter has only 140 characters and has a post awareness beyond 1 hours. By its definition it is meant for real-time and therefore for time-dependes events like the Olympics, TV-Live-broadcast, simply events that happen at a certain moment. Therefore we can conclude: Twitter is for media and real-time.

Let's get to the often called "Ghost town" Google Plus or Google+ which by mistake gets always compared and benchmarked by FB & Twitter. But it is neither of them, Google Plus is perfect for integrated services of Google, perfect to share longer textes and opinions and to discuss longer threads. It is a mixture of a blogging service and a forum, it is more professional and for geeks and nerds then Facebook and it is much more detailed then Twitter and less focused on real-time. Let's face it, Google+ is for writers and meaningful conversation.

The most recent one App.net which at least cost 50$/year for being part of the network and allowed to use it. It is definitely for developers and users that value the freedom of 3rd party companies that want to make money by advertising or other sales activities via the network. Users of App.net want pure communication without disruption and are willing to pay for it. It has for sure the least common ground and compared to others not the goal to reach the greatest mass (because scale and advertising depend each other). App.net is made for very professional discussion and elitear people that value freedom of use.

So - can we stop the whole discussion now what is best? Just pick one, or two or all of them and enjoy being social :)

Google+ Engagement Still Way Behind Facebook, Twitter

Google+ Engagement Still Way Behind Facebook, Twitter [STUDY]

I was observing the exact same and actually a tremendously decreasing interaction in general within G+ (in my circles)

What do you think? Are you actually "opening" G+ anymore frequently?

Facebook Hits 50% Mobile Users [Infographic]

As seen @socialbakers stats, Facebook has a very good reason to push any mobile activity, because almost 0.5 billion users, which is almost 50% of all Facebook users, are accessing the site via any mobile solution (mobile web, iOS, Android etc.).

This is a very high number given the fact that the mobile offerings are still very limited compared to the desktop site, especially the sharing and filtering is a big pain for the mobile user.

Nevertheless this proves that mobile and social are heavily depending from each other and that we can see a lot more new ideas and creations in this combination.

Happy mobile social world :)

Facebook Hits 488 Million Mobile Users [Infographic]

#mon.ki - bringing social into context

This is finally a startup with an offering that sounds promising and also could be a game changer. Usually we are all surfing facebook and twitter and refer then to the content. #mon.ki turns the story up-side-down and provides us with "people" and social interaction along the content we are viewing.

I am waiting for the beta invite, but I am confident that I might use it ;)