There might be some sort of cold war between Facebook and Google but that doesn’t mean the fight takes place in the real world. The two online giants may have rivaling social networking sites fighting for domination but their founders don’t mind having a pleasant conversation.
Just last January, during Facebook second earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that both companies are able to do a bunch of exciting stuff and create some great user experience. When the founders bump into each other at events, it becomes clear that they are both excited about geeky stuff. From the rumors, it only takes 2 seconds to get them exchanging pleasant conversation related to tech. That is exactly what happened on Thursday at the launch of the “$33 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences”, according a Forbes reporter who was there.
During the event, Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, was approached by Mark Zuckerberg. Brin then handed him the Google glasses and thought him how to use the scroll down feature on the side. Zuckerberg response was, he can’t wait to get his own.
Indeed according to Facebook’s CEO, a team of 3 engineers at Facebook are getting ready to receive their own pair of tech glasses so they can see how it could be used to improve the Facebook experience. Zuckerberg even ask Brin if he could make suggestions as to how the glasses could be used for Facebook.
One thing for sure is, if a Facebook app is launched on the tech glass, it is probably going to turn the glass into a much more addicting tool than expected. We already know that a lot of Facebook users are really addicted to the social network. Having the option to be connected to it with glasses wherever a user goes could be a big step for Facebook.
Talking about Facebook constantly getting into our lives, some latest survey done by Rebtel has shown that the the big online giant influences our mood more than any other social network. Rebtel, which is a company similar to Skype, conducted a survey where it tried to find out how people feel when using social media. Most participants said no social networks affect their mood. That said for those who admitted their emotions were affected online, Facebook came as the top social network that was causing it. Twitter followed up in the rank when it comes to bringing bad vibes.
Overall, the likeliness that a user is positively influenced by social media is higher. The survey indicated that 45.9% web enthusiasts saw Facebook as the site that could flip their mood positively. On the positive mood scale Youtube ranked at 17% with Linkedin following.
Andreas Bernstrom, Rebtel’s CEO, said in a statement that this social media survey gives an interesting pictures on how our social media life can have adverse effects on our relationships.
The mood of a person can affect the kind of comment he is sharing on the social network and that can affect the future of Facebook which can turn into a social content farm. Content farms are sites that share not really valuable information. They are site that are just trying to get traffic online and generate some income out of it. They release on kinds of valueless articles based on the popularity of certain keywords but whenever a user comes across those pages through the search engine he can’t find any useful information.
Google has been fighting against content farm for years and its latest algorithm seems to do a great job when it comes to filtering out those sites.
When it comes to Facebook it might be a different story. The news feed can sometimes be filled with boring status updates that nobody wants to read. There are also page brands trying to be heard and might bombard the news feed with all kinds of products they are trying to sell.
To solve this issue, Facebook came up with an algorithm that will decide on which post to rank better in the news feed based on the amount of interaction it has. The hope is to decrease the amount of boring status updates. The direct consequence was that some of the page brands could not reach their audience like at first. So to solve that problem Facebook then came up with the “Promoted Post” offer, allowing brands to pay a fee that will help their status updates rank better.
Not all the brands can afford to constantly pay to reach their audience on the social network. Some of them are just startup companies on a very limited budgets. It is estimated that for pages willing to post high volumes of status updates they could be spending around $700 000 a year just in Promoted Posts.
Managing an online social network is an ongoing process and Facebook will probably come up with new ideas as to improve the experience on its website. The social network is already part of our daily lives. it may not be perfect but we have to take it like that hoping for a better future.
Loic
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