Facebook and romantic relationships make for a potent — and potentially volatile — combination.
While the network does offer opportunities for meaningful social interactions and self-esteem boosts, it also opens a Pandora’s box of options for spying, stalking and other insecurity- and jealousy-driven actions between lovers.
And all those public relationship tidbits of data, from new relationship announcements to breakups to digital PDA, can have an impact on how others, including your partner, see you.
It was almost exactly a year ago that Diaspora started raising money on Kickstarter. A few weeks later, they had raised $200,000 from nearly 6,500 backers. Why so much excitement? Because Diaspora was aiming to be a Facebook alternative. That hasn’t exactly worked out. At least not yet. But now another startup is about to give it a go, Altly.
So why will this one be any different than Diasopra? Well, for one thing, it’s being started by a pretty well-known entrepreneur. Dmitry Shapiro, the founder of Veoh, is also the one behind Altly. While Veoh didn’t end so well (a firesale acquisition after raising nearly $70 million), they were once a very hot property in the online video space.
But even more notably, Shapiro was most recently an executive at Facebook rival MySpace (he worked on MySpace Music).
So why is Shapiro now aiming head-first at Facebook? He outlines the decision in a lengthy post on Altly’s blog. The basic gist? Facebook’s privacy controls are too confusing. And their social graph is now a mess. Oh, and they’re way too big and powerful. Their “tentacles” are everywhere on the web, and this is a problem because our privacy is at risk. Our data is locked in. Etc.
In other words, the usual critiques of Facebook.
But my favorite reason is this:
At this time there are no real alternatives to Facebook, as most people believe that no one can possibly create an alternative.
Mind. Blown. Well, except for the aforementioned Diaspora. And MySpace, which was once king, and tried to compete with Facebook, but simply lost. And others.
But Shapiro does have a point. As he writes:
There are NO serious alternatives at this time. For every Coke there is a Pepsi, for every Ford there is a Chevy, for every PC there is a Mac and for every Facebook there is…. a void! Facebook has such overwhelming power that practically no one believes that trying to build an alternative is possible.
But the problem is that this is not because of anything nefarious Facebook is doing. It’s simply because the rivals that have popped up haven’t been very good. And Facebook, for all its faults, is a very good, and very well-run product.
So Altly will take on this monumental task. And they’ll apparently do so with backing from DFJ.
They seem to be saying the right things. But so did Diaspora. It’s all about the execution. We’ll be watching this one closely, obviously.
A new study indicates that the average 22-year old in the UK claims to have a thousand or more friends on social media sites such as Facebook.
Indeed, the study by consumer research specialists Intersperience revealed that people in their twenties have more than fifty times the amount of cyber-friends than those over fifty years of age, who typically have less than twenty friends on social networks.
Paul Hudson, Chief Executive at Intersperience, said:
“Our research underlines fundamental changes taking place in British society as a result of finally entering the Digital Age. Half the UK population are on Facebook now and the explosion in social networking activity is blurring lines. In a social media context, a ‘friend’ means something different to a 20 year old than to a 50 year old.”
The generational digital gap revealed in this report perhaps shouldn’t be all that surprising, but the figure of a thousand friends may surprise some. Facebook’s official statistics state that the average Facebook user across the board has 130 friends on the social network.
Research firm Harris Interactive asked 2,124 American adults if they agree or disagree that some online companies, singling out such companies as Google or Facebook, control too much of our personal information and know too much about our browsing habits, and found that more than three quarters of respondents agreed (76%) with those statements.
Only one in six disagreed that these companies know and control too much (16%) and even fewer are ‘not sure’ (8%). These are some of the findings of a recent Adweek/Harris Poll survey of U.S. adults surveyed online between April 25 and 27, 2011 by Harris Interactive.
So basically, the report claims the large majority of people in the United States thinks that Facebook and Google are essentially evil corporations that store all sorts of information about us, but that doesn’t exactly stop them from using their services, it wouldappear.
And didn’t Harris Interactive just put out a report showing that Google is considered to be the most reputable company in the United States?
Anyhow, according to Harris Interactive, majorities of both men and women agree that these companies control too much and have too much information about us, although women appear to be somewhat more likely to say this than men are (79% vs. 74%). Also, more affluent Americans are more likely to agree than are Americans who earn less—80% of those who earn $75K or more per year agree, compared to 70% of those who earn between $35 and $50K.
However, says the report, American seem to oppose government intervention to regulate large online companies like Google or Facebook (46%) rather than support it (36%).
From the report:
It seems Americans are torn, possibly between ideals of free enterprise, the products and services that they use and enjoy which these large businesses provide, and their trepidations about companies yielding so much information and power. Either way it will be interesting to track reactions—if people embrace, or rather brace themselves against, these companies as they continue to grow and develop.
My educated guess? The network effect will continue to significantly outweigh any reservations people might indicate when polled online, so Google and Facebook – and other major online companies – needn’t worry too much at this point.
It’s a lot easier to agree with given statements about a service than to actually quit it.
Social media brand monitoring platform, Simplify360, explored the relationship between the number of Facebook fans and engagement level to reveal that on an average, each new post generates 826 likes and 309 comments.
The research firm took 50 Facebook fan pages with a random mix of brands from all over the world from consumer brands, to sports teams, to celebrities.
The research defines Liking Rate and Commenting Rate as the average ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ a post would generate if the number of fans for the page is normalized to one million. Only posts by the page admin are considered for the study.
It was almost exactly 
