Social Network Use By Country

(Click the image or this text to jump to the original map.)
French newspaper Le Monde has this great chart showing which region prefers which social network. (Funny: Friendster is even bigger in Asia-Pacific than I thought, and Germany doesn’t seem to have any social network preference. I guess StudiVZ should be listed here, no matter […]

What’ll happen to our data after Facebook jumps the shark?

Facebook has, very recently, made it possible to delete accounts instead of just deactivating them. Deleting the account is the only option to really make Facebook let go of your personal information, and until recently this was notoriously hard to accomplish.
Facebook has pretty decent privacy features, or at least privacy control features, as online social […]

Facebook, Google & Plaxo Join the DataPortability WorkGroup

This rocks: Duncan Riley just has a scoop on Techcrunch announcing that Facebook, Google and Plaxo are joining the DataPortability Workgroup
Duncan had been hinting at something big on Twitter, and what can I say, he was right: “I don’t joke when I say that the post I’ve written changes the entire game.”
DataPortability, and particularly being […]

Human vs Machine: What’s Better In Search?

The next few months should be interesting to watch: Monday, Wikia Search goes online. So there we have another powerful player in the next wave of search engine wars.
For the last few years, Google with its (mostly) machine-based search algorithms has been the dominant player in the search market, producing more or less the […]

Study: Real vs Fantasized Identity on Social Networking Sites

FaberNovel Consulting has just published a study on best practices from social networking sites.
The whole study contains a great overview over what’s important if you analyze social networking sites. Two aspects stood out for me, though:
First, the authors pointed out four dimensions to help distinguish social networks:

Second, the study also covers the way, identity is […]

Facebook Beacon is Serious Breach of Trust

Facebook recently introduced Facebook Beacon, a new technique for businesses and website operators to “enable your customers to share the actions they take on your website with their Facebook friends.”
Beacon can be installed by simply adding a few lines of code:
Simply determine which user actions you would like publish to Facebook (…) Facebook Beacon […]