Social networks are funny things: value to the user is determined less by the quality of the network itself than by the number of that user’s friends also using the network.

To put it another way: if show business is like “high school with money”, so it is (even more so) with social networks – popularity is everything.

In fact, it’s almost a zero-sum game: myspace kills off friendster, facebook kills off myspace…  It seems there can only be one dominant social network at a time (twitter coexists peacefully only because it’s more of an ‘opt-in broadcast network’ than a social network).

In this context, at a few months in, it’s time to ask: will google+ end up replacing facebook?  I’ve been a member of the beta  since day one (more on that here).  While I’ve yet to actually post anything (full disclosure: social networks are more interesting to me as a medium and cultural phenomenon than as something I’d choose to use personally) – I have had a ringside seat from which to witness user uptake of the service.

Below is my firsthand account of how’s it’s been going so far – at least from amongst my ‘circle’ (sorry, couldn’t resist) of friends and colleagues…

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On Monday, August 8, SXSW.com will announce the launch of the SXSW Interactive Scholarship 2012 program. While last year’s scholarship program was limited to nonprofits, this year’s iteration expands its focus to recognize individuals from all sectors and from anywhere in the world who are using new media to push the boundaries of tackling community problems. Nonprofit leaders, grassroots organizers, individual citizens, and civic-minded entrepreneurs are all eligible.

Individuals can begin to submit their essay anytime between Monday, August 8, and Friday, August 26. SXSW and CauseShift will lead the review and selection process with the five scholarship recipients to be announced on Monday, September 19. Each of the five recipients will receive a complimentary SXSW Interactive badge for the 2012 SXSW Interactive Festival.

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In the context of the city becoming a European center for internet startups, here’s a short video piece from Reuters on two companies based here in my adopted hometown of Berlin: soundcloud and wooga.

The day is coming when the ‘file’ as we know it will be a thing of the past for most computer users.   The process is already well under way:  use Google docs?  Under the File menu is a “See revision history” option.  Dropbox?  There’s a “Previous versions” option for every file up there.  Even the WordPress blogging platform (into which I’m typing right now) retains each intermediate version of every post I write (including manually saved versions and versions automatically saved by WordPress).

Versioning – For software developers, the ability to code without fear of overwriting a teammate’s work from last week (or last month) is critical – as is the ability to step back through each previous version of the code when tracking down bugs.  For these reasons, simply working on flat files – even if there’s a backup – is not an option.  Instead, versioning tools such as GIT and SVN have been developed, and are second nature to anyone writing code in a professional or team situation.

What’s interesting is that now similar technology is moving into the consumer space.

And it’s not just a ‘cloud thing’, either – Apple’s local backup solution ‘Time Machine’ has been around for a few years now, and in fact is more of a versioning tool than a traditional backup solution.  The new Lion OSX release takes things a step further – the operating systems is continually taking snapshots in the background of every open document as you work, and each of these snapshot is available as a separate revision. In other words, Lion (like Google Docs and WordPress) will even do the saving for you!

It won’t be long before the idea of the file (and of having to explicitly hit ‘save’) are – like the CD,  the 200GB external hard drive, and (maybe) the United States’ AAA bond rating – relics of the past.

When was the last time you donated money to a good cause – using your very cell phone that is?

No, this is not about poll voting for one’s favorite America Idol performer, or buying another app.

This is about wielding one’s smartphone to part ways with some of your hard-earned money purely with philanthropic intent.

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Since I’ve already been on a Google+ few weeks now (I had an invitation to try out the service the day before it launched – one of the small perks of writing a tech blog), and since I’ve already received an email invitation to try out the next brand new web service (the US rollout of Spotify),  I guess it’s about time I shared my impressions of Google’s planned Facebook-killer.

During the first day or two of Google+, you really had to “know a guy who knows a guy” to get an account, but if the recent escalation in the number of friends and family showing up there is any indication, they’re scaling up the service more aggressively than they did with Gmail a few years ago.

Although they’re keeping quiet about the numbers, some recent independent research estimates that about 20 million people have signed up as of this past weekend.  Just to put that in context, Facebook claims over 750 million active users.  On the surface, that would seem to represent some pretty substantial  inertia in Facebook’s favor – but the tipping point syndrome can be pretty brutal in the social networking world (imagine a cocktail party in which each guest can anonymously and painlessly bail out of if it turns out the cool kids are heading on over to the party down the street).

This point  is not lost on Facebook – in fact, Mark Zuckerberg is “keeping his enemies close” via a Google+ account of his own that’s ended up in over a quarter of a million Google+ user’s Circles – but has yet to contain a single post.

After playing around with it a bit, I think Google+ can objectively be said to have the edge over Facebook in terms of simplicity and transparency – and on a more subjective level, I believe there are a few other things to like about Google+, as well…

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There is a prejudice about the Chinese, that they will fake nearly anything.


I will start with a non-tech story a friend of mine from Shanghai told me: a colleague of his bought a Audi A6 in China for a really good price – a “lucky punch”, a bargain.  This made him happy.  A view months later there was a problem with the motor, and as the guy isn’t a great mechanic he took the car to the nearest Audi garage.  A day later the garage rang him up and asked him where he bought the car.  He told them he bought it in Shanghai, but not from an official Audi dealer.  The garage employee responded: “Hm… , well, OK, that maybe explains something, because actually your car is not a real Audi….”   Hard to believe?
I thought this was really priceless, that even German cars are now being faked (‘knocked off‘) in China.

Coming to another kind of fake:  five years ago I have been to one of the official tourist knock off markets in China that specialized in garments, handbags and watches.  I’ve since been told that this market was closed down due to the pressure from all the luxury brands on the Chinese (by the way, I have never seen a bigger Louis Vuitton store than in Shanghai) – so I really thought that the times of these markets were over.  Well, as it always happens in China: if something closes, it remains for this for some weeks and then it pops up in another side of the city…  and now, voilà, it’s not only cloths, shoes, and handbags – the new thing is, they even fake electronics nowadays.  Clearly, the iPhone is the #1 knock off you see everywhere.  And they even have a faked the software on it, the icons look pretty similar and it works more or less.   But if that’s  not enough, all forms of iPods of course, iPads (yes, 1 and 2) and Blackberry knock-offs are available too.   Sure, you’ll see all of our iconic Asian status symbols there!

But see yourself on the pictures (sorry I forgot to take one of the iPhone display showing the operating system).

Facebook yesterday announced it is adding Skype video chat to its growing list of features.

This is not a trivial matter.

With its Skype video chat announcement, Facebook merges social with communication. If done right, that’s a tremendously powerful combination.

For one, think of Facebook as your white pages on steroids; a single globally connected super-large phonebook stuffed with detailed profiles, likes and dislikes, photos, links, messaging – the works!

Now add video chat to the mix. Is this the genesis of Facebook Telecom?

Not quite. But at closer look, the social network giant might just have the wherewithal to grow into the first global social IP carrier.

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There’s a new social networking service in town. It’s called Google+/Google Plus. The beta isn’t fully open to the public yet.

There’s a lot of nerdy/media-y navel-gazing going on there right now.

There will be advantages to businesses, political organizations and non-profits down the road.

There are some features “stolen” from other social networks; others are brand new. Users will like some things and hate others.

The end.