Facebook's new aquisition

If you thought that Google + would slow down the facebook's expansion, then perhaps you might be wrong.Social networking giant Facebook has bought a digital publishing company Push Pop Press that develops technology to help make interactive books optimised for iPad and other Apple devices.

"We're thrilled to confirm that we've acquired Push Pop Press, a startup whose groundbreaking software changes the way people publish and consume digital content," Xinhua quoted Facebook as saying in a statement.

Push Pop Press was co-founded by Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris - both former Apple employees.

It had also teamed up with former US vice president Al Gore to create a digital version of his book "Our Choice".

"Although Facebook isn't planning to start publishing digital books, the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook, giving people even richer ways to share their stories," Push Pop Press said in a statement.

"With millions of people publishing to Facebook each day, we think it's going to be a great home for Push Pop Press," it said.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by the two companies.

HTC status smartphone : Now in market

The HTC Status smartphone has finally arrived at the AT&T and is selling for under $400 (excluding any taxes) without a contract and for under $50 (excluding any fees) with a 2 year agreement.

But the big question is Does this phone really have any market value more-so when Facebook's market share is constantly on decline and there is a big threat from Google+. In this kind of uncertainty whether Facebook would able to survive this difficult phase or not is still a big question, this phone is certainly not the best option for the networking users.

The mobile device with the blue button for accessing Facebook has hit the shelves of select retailers.Best Buy will be offering an exclusive color for the social mobile device. With the special Facebook share button the user will have one touch access to the social site.
The Status by HTC will offer the user the convenience, ease-of-use and depth of HTC Sense user interface when using the device in addition to connectivity of Facebook. As part of an extended selection of six innovative  gadgets that were introduced at the Mobile World Congress, the HTC  Status was introduced as the HTC ChaCha. The mobile gadget features a dedicated Facebook button intended for one-touch access to the key capabilities of the Facebook service that are bundled through the HTC Sense experience.
The Facebook button on HTC Status  is context-aware, lightly pulsing with light anytime there is an opportunity to discuss subject matter or updates via Facebook. With a solitary touch of the button, you’ll be able to update your current status, upload a picture, promote a Website, post what tune you happen to be listening to, ‘check in’ to a location and much more.
The HTC Status runs on Android Gingerbread 2. 3. 3, the most recent version, and utilize the most current version of HTC Sense to combine Facebook throughout the HTC Sense encounter. While you make a phone call, the dialer display shows your friend’s most current status and pics, and also lets you know in the event his or her birthday is drawing near.

The same updates can be shown when you get a call coming from a Facebook friend. You can also use your phone’s existing contacts to help you connect with them on Facebook or personalize your handset further with a number of new, Facebook-branded widgets.

Google + spoof

Google plus, is indeed the trending topic not only on twitter but on facebook too. The latest buzz coming straight  from Google is that its social venture has already registered nearly 18 million users inspite of being in "beta and invite only mode."

Here are few of the videos (coustesy-youtube, one of the closet in Google's vast wardrobe) which spoofs the Facebook founder's take on Google +.




Ever thought How would Adolf Hotler react to this online sensation. If not then have a look





Now how about the Google- (minus) project.



Even the babies are concerned about this online phenomenon. Have a look


Google minus not that bad either ;p

Google vs Facebook

With its still-in-limited-field-test social network Google+, Google looks poised to challenge Facebook head-on in the increasingly important social media space. Some analysts give the edge to Facebook with its large head start -- the company claims more than half a billion active users worldwide, half of whom log onto the site each day. Other pundits point to Google's large number of users across multiple products along with its engineering prowess as factors making it a formidable challenger.

How do the companies stack up head to head? Here's a look at some of the available statistics.

Users
Google has a clear edge globally, according to ComScore Data Mine: Google reached a billion unique visitors worldwide in May, while Facebook rang in at 713.6 million.


Source: The Nielsen Company

Google's lead is narrower in the U.S., where it had 155 million unique visitors from desktop and laptop computers in May compared with Facebook's 140 million, the Nielsen Company reported. The Nielsen survey does not include mobile devices.

Facebook had a huge lead in time spent per person: more than 6 hours vs. an hour and 20 minutes.

However, Facebook users have been fairly unhappy with the social media site. Last year, it scored "in the bottom 5% of all measured private sector companies and in the same range as airlines and cable companies, two perennially low-scoring industries with terrible customer satisfaction," according to the July 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report. Google's score of 80 (out of 100) was substantially higher than Facebook's 64. New data should be coming out sometime this month.

Bottom line: Google is still the Internet's leading brand in terms of number of users. Facebook has an enormous base of regular users who spend a considerable amount of time on its site -- much more time than on Google. However, Facebook's users were not particularly happy with their experience last year. It will be interesting to see whether Facebook's customer satisfaction scores come in higher in this year's ACSI.

Revenues
Google's revenues are fairly straightforward, since as a public company it must report such data each quarter. Facebook's are less clear, since it is still privately held. According to one estimate reported by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook had $1.86 billion in ad revenue last year and should top $4 billion this year. Google reported $29.3 billion in overall revenues last year (not just from ads).


Source: eMarketer

eMarketer estimates that Google had 38.5% of the online advertising market last year vs. 4.6% for Facebook. The research firm estimates that Facebook's share will grow to 7% this year compared with 40.8% for Google.


Bottom line: Google is considerably larger than Facebook in revenue and still growing, but Facebook looks to be expanding much faster.

Employees
This is a particularly tough metric, as Facebook doesn't release that data. The latest estimate, from an in-depth profile of chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg in the current issue of The New Yorker, came in at 2,500 employees. That's close to double the estimates reported for early 2010. Google reported 24,400 employees at the end of last year, up from 19,835 in 2009.

Bottom line: As with revenue, Google's employee count is substantially higher than Facebook's, but Facebook appears to be growing more rapidly.

Conclusion
Many other factors will come into play to determine whether Google+ can successfully challenge Facebook in the social media arena, including the appeal of the new service and whether people are willing to leave an established network where they already have numerous connections.

Google is well positioned as an Internet brand with better customer satisfaction than Facebook, and is a larger company with more internal resources. However, Facebook is a high-growth company that's likely on the verge of a public stock offering, meaning it has access both to a great deal of investor cash and top-flight employees hoping to cash in on that growth.

The most likely winner? Social media users, who will benefit from two strong companies battling to improve their products to either keep or win over customers.

Google chrome : buzz

So finally google plus (+) is ready for the networking market (still in Beta testing and invite only mode though) but the big question is do we need to change the social platform again i.e. from "facebook" to "google plus", more so when the 70% of the all internet users are still active on Facebook.

Aren't we already slaves to Google's vast empire ?? From watching videos(youtube) to managing our e-mails(gmail), from blogging(blogger) to storing our photos(picasa), from advertising(adwords) to publishing(adsense,doubleclick), from internet browsing(chrome) to seeking information(google) and last but not the least even our mobile phones are having google's presence in the form of "Android" and if we prefer google plus, our entire internet activity might concentrate at the single host, which may be risky as some critics are pointing out.

The biggest fear among all the tech critics is that the hype which is being created by the Google +, we hope it don't turn out to be a desperate shout or if you would like to put in the financial terms "a big powerful social bubble". Google is treating their social venture as a "project" and not as a "website" (good for them). It's not very long ago when Google launched their one more over hyped social platform named "buzz" to gain the market share of "instant micro-blogging market" and beat the competitors like "Twitter" which for now is clearly dominating the field but unfortunately Google failed miserably and that's the very reason, I would suggest to all the facebook users to think twice before swapping your social life from one platform to another.
It's too early to compare Google plus with Facebook. Google's current 10 million users database might seem "as a drop in the ocean" in front of the mammoth size of  Facebook which is having more than 750 million users, out of them more than 50% are active users. But again Google is in beta testing mode only and is available to selected users only. We have to wait for the real response from the people.

It would be quite emotinal for the addiccted and  avid facebook lovers to leave the terms like "wall", "poke", "like" and get use to new social terminologies such as "hangouts", "sparks", "circles". Google's marketing strategy is quite lame too. Instead of endorsing their own brand, they are showing more interest in downgrading other social media services especially "facebook". Google is emphasizing more on the "privacy issue" which scores where facebook lacks and "sharing" to be made simpler and compatible. Well to be frank there is nothing new in this social extravaganza but slightly different from others. Here are few of their main features-


Circles = Facebook. Share content with your friends, only you don't have to share everything with  everybody at once. You can pick and choose specific groups.

Sparks = Google Reader or Delicious. Subscribe to news and information sources and get a constantly updated feed.

Hangouts = Tinychat. Live video conversations with multiple friends at once.

Instant Uploads = Microsoft Kin (and iCloud, and...). Snap photos with your phone and they're automatically uploaded to an online storage spot on Google Plus.

Huddle = GroupMe. Group chat.