Social Dose

Facebook, the fourth largest website on the Internet according to a recent estimate, has rolled out its new search functionality. This is a promising new feature that aims to provide highly valuable market intelligence tapped from the largest social data repository in the world. After advertising on relatively irrelevant content areas of the website, Facebook is set to revitalize the commercial value aspect of its massively popular social networking system. The new Facebook search acts like a search engine of the world’s largest social network, searching through comments about products and brands, and bringing out gems of market insight that are hard to replicate elsewhere.

A blog called Search Facebook promises to provide relevant information about how best to tap this emerging consumer research tool, providing INternet marketers with valuable insight into the behavioral preferences of millions of consumers worldwide.

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are all the rage in the travel industry. With lots of holidaygoers scrambling to find good deals on cheap holidays in Europe and beyond, travel services companies are making use of social networking tools to get the word out to interested consumers. The travel industry is incresaingly competitive with many agencies struggling to beat each other’s offers. It is not too rare to see claims of “not being beaten” on price, with cuthroat competition to the last dollar (or pound).

In this environment, any business with a social networking push is bound to get a competitive advantage. Social network marketing has the advantage of being readily low profile, and advertising can often be disguised as a benevolent social exchange. Convincing customers is thus easier when your advertising doesn’t appear to be advertising.

Google has introduced a new product that has potentially groundbreaking implications for social networking. The latest Internet hit from the search giant is the Google  News Timeline, a feature lets you see your favourite news topics in a chronologically ordered page that makes the best of Google News’s search functionality.

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A Ohio State University study has concluded that there is a correlation between low grades and the use of social networking site Facebook. In a finding that is sure to raise some hackles among social networking proponents, Facebook was singled out as one network that could adversely affect academic performance.

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We’ve all heard of duplicate content on the World Wide Web, but duplicate text messages? Now that’s definitely something new. Twitter has resumed mobile broadcast services in the UK in collaboration with Vodaphone. However, things aren’t exactly going to plan.

People in the UK have complained of multiple identical text messages coming in sporadic succession. 10, 15 or even 20 messages aren’t uncommon, with the result that people are waking up to their mobile inboxes full with junk.

“Tell Twitter what you’re doing” may even be misinterpreted as SMS spam as people being to wonder why Twitter is so desperate to know what they’re up to.

Social networking is all the rage these days, with intense coverage both on and off the Web. With big names Facebook and Twitter experiencing record growth, industry analysts are salivating over future social networking business prospects. However, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. Like most revolutionary developments and technologies, social networking is bound to encounter fierce opposition from social observers backed by media traditionalists.

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Apparently, a business operation in the United Kingdom going by the name of “Twitter Partners” has attracted the attention of the Internet’s fastest growing mobile social networking service.

With the rapid growth of third party services sprouting all over cyberspace and into the real world, people and businesses are scrambling to make sense and cash in on what can arguably be the Internet’s biggest money maker after Google.

Twitter’s blog has a post clarifying that the aforementioned service wasn’t really an official Twitter “Partner”.

As the latest in a series of social networking experiments by Yahoo, the search giant has announced that it is set to launch a new social network. Some analysts say that Yahoo’s massive advertising infrastructure can be effectively leveraged to monetize a new enterprise.

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What’s the Twitter API? We’ve all heard about how powerful Twitter can be because of the functions it provides to other applications using its API. Popular applications using the Twitter API include such websites as Twhirl, Twitturly and Hashtags.org.

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Wasn’t Facebook enough? Why Twitter?

With the skyrocketing recent interest in Twitter coupled with the plethora of third party services mushrooming all around, many people are wondering what all the hype is about. Well, what’s so great about Twitter?

Let’s see some of the great things Twitter can do, or help you do. Let’s start simple.

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