Mercury News: Facebook's plans For Menlo Park HQ: 9,400 Workers In Next 6 Years: The fast-growing social networking company, which currently employs about 1,400 people in Palo Alto, expects to reach full capacity at the Sun campus and nearby buildings on Constitution Drive by 2017. ...... Menlo Park is inviting the public to suggest what environmental impacts should be studied. The deadline for comments is May 26.
You read about Facebook's new location, and you end up appreciating New York City so much more. You appreciate the subway, you appreciate the endless number and variety of bars and cafes in the city. You appreciate the whole damn package deal. NYC is the place to be. The banks imploded, and all of a sudden the tech sector in the city was flush with talent. By now there is even flush money.
Image via WikipediaMark Suster's three pieces on TechCrunch are a nice summary of what has happened, and what is happening, although if any of this is news to you, I have to ask, where have you been?
When he starts talking about the future, it gets trickier. Social has so much buzz right now that it is hard to imagine the post-social buzz. But that there will be is for sure. There always has been. Social itself will morph. Social is one thing. Social and mobile as a combo is a case of two plus two being five. To that cocktail add local and global and you end up with two plus two equals 22. And it is not easy to figure out.
One good news is I see many, many players emerging.
ReadWriteWeb: Facebook Growing Fast in Brazil, but Orkut Still far Ahead: Google's social network Orkut never quite caught on in most countries, but it remains the most popular social network in Brazil. .... Facebook is only the third most popular social networking site in Brazil .... The second largest social networking site in Brazil is Windows Live ...... Google's site remains far ahead of all of its competitors in Brazil. The site's visitors also spend far more minutes on the site than the users of any of the other popular social networks in Brazil. ..... average Orkut user spent 275.8 minutes on the site in August, while the average Facebook user only spent 29.3 minutes on Facebook. ..... the highest Twitter penetration in the world. Twitter is especially popular among younger users (15 to 24) ..... also interesting to note how popular the relatively new Q&A site formspring.me has become in Brazil. .... the fifth most popular social network in the country.
Nielsen Wire: What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) ... Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. ..... “Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing .... Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks
I like how blogs have been included in the top category of social. I am not surprised. That speaks to my experience. I have said time and again at this blog that Blogger continues to be my social media platform of choice.
The big news is search is no longer king. That begs the question, will social as we know it still be king in 2015? I doubt that. These titles are not known to last. There is always another hit movie. Social will stay big, but at some point it is going to recede into the background like search. Search used to be king. Who is the next king? You have to ask. (This Is Not Happening: King Dennis)
Or maybe search was never king, it was email. Email is social. If the next king will also be in the social space, that has to confirm our suspicions that the internet is primarily a communication tool. The internet is one big telephone. The internet is one big telephone more than one big library. But the trick is to be able to blur that line and claim it is one big telephone.
Google keeps trying and keeps failing at social. Social is not in Google's DNA. But info is. Where Google could really shine is at social search. Give me a ridiculously good blog search engine. Give me ridiculously good Twitter search results. Google could do well in social, if it brought search to the table. Google's challenge is to blur the line between the telephone and the library and make claim the internet is one big library. That is tough to do.
It works in a similar way like Facebook and MySpace, with options likes profiles, Bbogging and several messaging and other various niche tools. It is specifically designed to allow people to create a helpful community and serve each other or for those who are really interested to understand the mental conditions. It also provides the necessary online environment with networking based format and options. It allows members to anonymously reach out to people and find the best fertile solutions.
Colin Spencer Wood, the company president and CEO was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1999. In statement, Wood mentioned, "When people suffer from mental health conditions, they sometimes feel isolated and there might not be anyone else in a patient’s life that has experienced similar conditions. This makes difficult for family and friends to relate or understand what they're going through.”
MentalHealthSocial.com is considered as the gift in such cases, which eliminates those feelings of isolation by bringing people with similar experiences together.
"Portal dedicated to talk or express.. Who can really understand their thoughts....about whatever mental conditions they are actually dealing with".
Key features of the Mental Social Media are user friendly interface where everyone can share information about themselves, post photos or videos and other offers. In addition, portal aims to support other mental health related non-profit organizations through promotions and services.
Success of Facebook and Twitter has played an important role in the launch of Mental Social Network. It can be a great platform for students associated with medical education to connect to the network and understand the mental conditions. Further, it was found in recent surveys that many US based firms operating disease control centre uses Twitter, Youtube and even games to spread information about swine flu and other medical concerns and problems. Chicago based Children Hospital is using Second Life for disaster preparedness, while disabled people turn in to virtual world for peer support.
With changing culture and technology, mental health networking can play an important role in bringing better health services to people and collaborating experience from around the world for better understanding.
I am a huge fan of Facebook. I check in not as much as into my Gmail account, but it is close. I think things will only get better. I love the video clips I can access, the music, I am enamored with its personality tests. One test told me what I have long suspected, that I am "an advocating inventor." Too many people think of me as a politician. I also like the scrabble I saw and added yesterday. There is no time limit. You make your next move the next time you log in. Wow.
Most of my "friends" at Facebook are people I have never met though. I have met a few cool people who do interact, but most are people who okayed the friend request and then were gone.
In the way I use Facebook might be the germ of the Unfacebook.
Facebook is a walled garden. It is designed for you to more efficiently stay in touch with people who you already know. And I am thinking, what a waste.
What if you want to go online with the express intention of meeting people? Real people? People that you otherwise do not know, will not meet?
So you create a site. And it allows users to create an extremely detailed profile of who they are. Like extremely, extremely detailed. By the time you are done, it is a pretty good snapshot of who you are. Not everyone has to completely complete it, of course, and it is just that people will know how much of your profile you have completed.
So you create an account. And you log in. You complete your profile. Then you want to go meet people. How would that work?
People's names and photos will not show up when you do searches. Instead you will have to seek areas of interest, or hobbies. You will have the option to narrow down your geographical area. Maybe you just want people in your city. Or not.
It will not be just interest. It will also be level of interest.
There will be social interests, there will be cultural interests. There will be work related interests. There will be activity interests.
You seek grounds of common interest. And you explore the depth of the interest.
As you get to know each other more, you exercise the option to share a little bit more of your extremely detailed profile.
Detailed personality tests will be kind of mandatory. And there will be automatches based on pesonality type, areas of interest, geography, social choices, etc.
I guess what I am getting at is, you will get the name and the face of the person towards the end and not at the beginning like happens with the current hot social networking sites.
Often times you will meet people and strike a small conversation, and you realize you have run out of steam, there is nothing much to explore, nothing much to talk about anymore, and you move on. You don't bother to know more about the person, let alone learn their name and figure what they look like.
Or you might meet people you do want to share your name and face with early in the process, if you feel like it.
The power of the internet is not the people you already know. The power of the internet is people you can meet and get to know that you never would have if the internet were not there.
This concept can also be extended to group formation.
Groups would self form, grow or dissolve based on shared interest and engagement. And it could be scaled. Maybe there are 1,000 people who want to discuss the raging fires in Greece right now. But that group might have died out in about three weeks.
This will also work great for people who belong to ethnic groups that are small in number and are dispersed.
And of course the whole site should make great use of the rest of the web.
Maybe there should be automatic Google searches and YouTube searches for all areas of interest.
So if my interest is Barack Obama, I would get the top 5 headlines on him when I log in, and the headlines should be top, middle or bottom of the page depending on how much I am into Obama according to the system. Do I talk about him a lot?
The system should make room for degrees of friendship. There should be an entire spectrum.
Best friend is at one end. Block this person from my system should be another. He should never be able to contact me again.
There is the activity partner. There is the acquaintance. There is the colleague. There is the friend. There is the conversation partner, the game partner. There is the lover.
I think this Unfacebook is closer to our social realities and how we go about meeting people when we want to meet people and expand our social horizons.
Somebody could launch this Unfacebook, or like Facebook 2.0 was all the applications, Facebook 3.0 could be this Unfacebook. And if you do adopt this, invite me to sit your Board, fellas.
And after you feel like you have become friends with someone, you of course will have the option to bring them into your walled garden, into the Facebook 2.0 zone, the Facebook of today, the Ununfacebook.
I think social networking the internet way is even younger than the internet, and has more places to go, many more. The metaphor that comes to my mind is that of a tornedo touchdown. The internet is the tornedo. When you use it for social networking purposes, it is a touchdown. The results can be positively "devastating."
Look at MeetUp.com. I have some history with this site. My early enthuse for Dean got me to the site. And I got hooked. Dean moved on, I stayed on. So imagine my utter surprise when I bumped into the CEO of MeetUp, mid-westerner Scott, close to my age, who has since invited me to his office, not long after I moved into the city. I met this guy at a MeetUp. To me it was like I ended up at some party where I met a Hollywood star, something akin to it. And he is so self-effacing in presence. I guess he is one of those never-lose-your-cool, big-picture visionaries. I mean, what did I expect him or someone like him to be? Obnoxious? Look, I got the big idea! The guy is MIT Innovator Of The Year. He hosts the Tech meetup in the city.
I have told him, eBay is people meet stuff, MeetUp is people meet people. MeetUp could potentially end up the Yahoo of social networking. It is like you grow big, early, fast, then you go public. And you grow bigger. Then you conduct a lot of smart buys, like a frog eats up dragonflies.
The quicksilver market that the internet is, it is not guaranteed MeetUp or any other one site will get there. But MeetUp has the broadness that few other social networking sites have. For one, it has this definite offline component. Social networking sites that are all screen time and no face time have something fundamental lacking. But then there are some that are doing quite well. Look at these three that took up a lot of my time today: Flickr | 43Things | Delicious.
Flickr is a good example. Curiously Scott had something that was earlier than Flickr, and quite like it, but I guess Flickr is smoother in operation, sexier, and so it got bought up by Yahoo and made two people very rich very quick.
There is this another, 8minutedating.com. Speed dating, I think it is such a cool concept. I went to one, if I did not get a second date does not mean my enthusiasm for the concept is any lesser! But my point is it is another of those tornedo touchdown concepts.
I think MeetUp's future lies in attempting to become the Yahoo of social networking.
And then there are a whole bunch of Friendster type companies.
In short, there are all these great ideas that started out as great companies that still have a lot of people, especially investors, people who count a little more than the rest of us, believing in them, but the breakthrough has yet to happen. One obvious criterion therefore is those who will patiently stick it out will stand a chance.
But more important than that might be the quality of a rabid hunger for rapid expansion. It is a race in time. If you do it almost as good, but are about a year late, that might be a little too late.
Since I made my trip to Scott's office, I have played with the idea of getting involved in some way. I couldn't afford to do it full time, not to get a job, because I have these ideas that I am cultivating. There is the IC idea, there is the online marketing idea, and there is the political involvement to do with Nepal. Maybe I can consult for them.
I do not pretend to be an engineer, although I have a pretty good intuitive feel for concepts in physics. But my strength is group dynamics. I think the winner social networking site will tackle the challenge from the High Touch end rather than the High Tech end, although tech is very important, after all what you are offering is a site. A web service.
I think, for MeetUp, the key is to further decentralize. To make localization more possible. Used to be there was this one golden day someone had chosen when people on one topic met all over the country. Now local Organizers can monkey with the meeting dates. That is good. What would further localization look like? It goes from the city to the group. From the group to the individual.
Broadly speaking.
Internet based social networking is a young market. It will likely see many upheavals. There will be pendulum swings from common sense to sophistication and penetration and back.
Wait a minute. Guess what I found out this very minute: Scott has been profiled by my former rival Rediff! Now I know why we Chaitime people lost: we never discovered Scott!
Image via CrunchBaseFacebook Location
and Twitter has played an important role in the launch of Mental Social Network. It can be a great platform for students associated with medical education to connect to the network and understand the mental conditions. Further, it was found in recent surveys that many US based firms operating disease control centre uses Twitter, 
Officer, 
Management Apps – Buzzom 
10,000 rank globally.)
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