Google Hangouts App

Over the last few days, Google has been announcing a number of new services and enhancements to their offerings.  One of these enhancements we are excited about is the new Google Hangouts app. Google Hangouts themselves are not new, and chances are you have seen or used them before, but until this week, accessing this service on your mobile device was not very convenient. With this new stand alone app, it looks like the bar has been raised for chat services. As an Android user, I am particularly excited for this enhancement. Although I do love my Samsung Galaxy 3, the one thing it does not do well, is group chatting. Since the majority of mobile devices out there are still iPhones, whenever I get included on a group chat initiated from an iPhone, it is impossible to follow. All the messages get broken up into separate texts and it turns into a nightmare. I have since remedied this inconvenience by using a 3rd party app known as GroupMe. I admit GroupMe does to a good job when it comes to group texts, but it does not have the ability to sync with the rest of my Google services or offer video chatting, plus the people  you are chatting with need to have this app downloaded on their phone.

You may be asking, what about iChat and Skype? Sure, they have fairly good video chatting capability, but if you have tried all 3, it becomes obvious that Google comes out ahead in categories like ease of use, quality and functionality.

This new Google Hangouts app is going to be like text messaging on steroids. The nice thing about texting is the conversation stays in a continuous stream that never stops. No matter how infrequent you talk to someone, you can pick up the conversation from where you left it last.  Google Hangouts is going to be just like this, however, now you can throw in fun things like pictures, videos, multiple people, Gchat messages, screen sharing, etc.

If I haven't convinced you of how awesome this new app will be, check out this YouTube video from Google:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/XkpjZ7oA_Qg]

-Mike

Google+ Getting Closer

Google+ has been gaining ground on Facebook as of late. Although the numbers are still heavily in Facebook's favor, when looking at percentage increase, Google+ is showing some encouraging signs. According to Nielsen, the average Google+ visitor spent 6 minutes and 47 seconds on the social network in March. Now when you compare that to Facebook's average time spent for March at 6 hours and 44 minutes, there doesn't seem to be any competition. However, when you look at the change from February to March, Google+ rose from 3.3 minutes, while Facebook fell from 7 hours and 9 minutes.

Other statistics worth noting are the 20 million unique Google+ views via mobile apps, which is a 238% increase over the previous month. Desktop unique views also jumped 63% to 28 million, compared to last year. While these are great stats for Google+, one must keep in mind how far they have to go to reach Facebook. Over the same time period, Facebook had 142.1 million unique desktop visits and 99 million unique mobile visits. It will be interesting to see if Google+ can continue this upward trend. We believe Google+ has a lot of potential, especially as Facebook has been seeing declining numbers recently, but only time will tell.

-Mike

Facebook Graph Search Brings New Privacy Concerns

Are you one of the 13 million Facebook users who have not touched their privacy settings? Many people may not be concerned over their privacy settings on Facebook, but with Graph Search rolling out to the masses soon, your personal information security will be at an all time low. If allowing strangers to see your personal information online doesn't scare you, the fact that 91% of employers admit to using social network sites to screen potential employees might. With everything from your vacation pictures to banking information being stored online these days, security is becoming more and more crucial. Be smart and take the time to understand the security settings, not only on Facebook, but all of your other online accounts. The hassle of reading the fine print now is nothing compared to something like identity fraud later. Check out this infographic to learn a little more about the privacy trends on Facebook:

-Mike

Retwact That Tweet

Have you ever had tweeters remorse? One minute you think you are in front of cutting edge news, getting it out there before anyone else, the next minute you are wrought with regret, knowing those 100 retweets are just a glaring reminder of your impulsive and erroneous tweet. With Twitter becoming one of the most influential platforms when it comes to breaking news, it was evident that some  tweets will need to be updated, edited or retracted. In comes Stonly Baptiste, a software developer from Pennsylvania. After seeing more and more people calling for a retracting or editing function on Twitter, Stonly spent a sleepless 48 hours developing what he is calling the Retwact. Basically this system works by pulling up your last five tweets. From those five, you have the ability to select one tweet and type out the correction or apology. Once your retwact is published, it will go out to all of your followers, meanwhile, Retwact's own account will reach out to the fist 100 people who retweeted your incorrect tweet with an @ mention.

There are still some things that need to be ironed out, like only being able to go 5 tweets back, but Stonly plans to continue working on and improving the Retwact until someone like Twitter offers to buy him out. This seems like a much needed tool and we don't think it will be long before Twitter purchases it from Stonly.

-Mike

Social Photos No Longer Yours

Facebook and Instagram users in Britain may no longer solely own their photos. As of last week, the U.K.'s Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act, passed the final stages to become law. This new act is basically a change to existing copyright laws, which will allow commercial use of images that do not have any information identifying the owner. Known as "orphan work", companies are now permitted to claim these photos after doing a diligent search to first identify the owner. At the end of the day, if you take a great picture of a sunset, a company can take that picture and advertise with it as their own or even sell it to other companies. All this without giving you any credit or cut in the profit. Apparently your only option to prevent having your photographic work constantly being stolen, is to register every photo you take. If this sounds like more trouble than its work, you are probably right. Currently there is only one registry available, which will make registering all your photos quite tedious.

It seems that an increase in law suits over who owns what on the internet is eminent in the U.K. Whether or not a company did in fact make a diligent search for the owner will be a very grey area, since it is hard to quantify what exactly constitutes as diligent. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the pond. We have heard whispers of similar things happening here in the U.S. but after seeing how the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act effects Britain, we should all have a better idea of the correct rout to take.

-Mike

Hide Your Kids, Hide Your Wife and Hide Your Tweets, They're Hacking Everybody Out Here

The big news in social media yesterday was the hacking of the AP's twitter. A hacker group known as the Syrian Electronic Army is taking credit for hijacking the AP's twitter account Tuesday morning and falsely tweeting that there was an explosion at the White House and the President was injured. Moments after the tweet, the Dow Jones flash crashed 143 points. Luckily the AP corrected their tweet quickly and the Dow was able to readjust without major incident. Even though there were no major repercussions from this hacked tweet, it is making everyone, from Wall Street to Twitter, rethink social media security. Wall Street is surprisingly intertwined with social media. They have computer programs and algorithms that scan major news headlines and can auto-trade based on the news, this is how 1 tweet from a respected source can cause such an immediate threat to our economy. Twitter has become such an important factor on Wall Street that this month Bloomberg announced they will be adding the service to their trading terminals. This is HUGE news for Twitter, anyone familiar with Wall Street and trading knows, Bloomberg has such a gigantic influence on the industry that whatever service or practice they introduce becomes the standard.

It seems that there have been an increasing number of Twitter hacks of large brands recently. One of note was the Burger King hack back in February. Here is an infographic of the stats from that day:

Looking at these impressive stats, it is easy to see how much damage a hacked Twitter account can cause. In light of all these recent hacks, Twitter has announced they will be introducing a two-step verification system, which will help prevent fraud by requiring the user to input two pieces of personal information to verify their identity. With our increasing dependence on Twitter for the latest news, we feel that this new security measure is a must. If Twitter cannot remain a reliable source, there will be serious repercussions in the near future.

We have also included the below infographic on some of the more notable Twitter hacks in recent memory. Although this information is a bit dated, it is very interesting to see what 140 characters can do.

-Mike

Breaking Pizza News

Starting today, April 23rd, Pizza Hut is launching an app for Xbox Live that will allow you to order a pizza straight from your Xbox console. This idea is so simple, yet so genius, it is amazing that this service has not already been created. Now, this is not the first alternative ordering method to be introduced, but it is the first time someone can order food straight from their gaming console. Some may be wondering why this is even necessary. It seems very similar to picking up the phone or jumping on Seamless.com to order food. However, if any of you know a true gamer, things like food often come second to getting that high score. From what we've seen so far, we think this new ordering system is an amazing idea considering how huge the gaming community is and how all consumer activities are quickly going digital. We can't wait to see it take off to include many new companies and restaurants.

-Mike