5 Most Social Networking Sites You Should Join

There’s a constant curiosity and global battle to have the top ranked social networking site. If you’re spending the majority of your social networking time on a less popular site, are you getting the results you could be getting if you did more research? eBizMBA Rank offers a routinely updated average of each website’s Alexa Global Traffic Rank, and U.S. Traffic Rank from Compete and Quantcast. Here are the Top 5 sites for February.

FACEBOOK

750,000,000 Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors

Mostly everybody is on it, whether they admit it or not. It’s quick, easy to navigate and addicting. It presents ads in an unobtrusive way. Many users enjoy checking themselves into places and this creates more buzz for businesses utilizing social media. You can promote your posts or advertise on a variety of budgets. Many people are on Facebook more than their personal email now, so it’s a very convenient way to reach people.

                                            

It’s very easy to get sucked up into the Facebook vortex and waste time looking at your friend’s vacation photos or what your high school prom date is making for dinner. It’s pretty much always at your fingertips and you have to use your Facebook time wisely. Setting an alarm in your cell phone can help monitor your Facebook time so you don't over do it and end up with uncompleted tasks for the day.

TWITTER

250,000,000 Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors

You have to get your point across in 140 characters or less. People love the simplicity and immediacy of Twitter. You can share a thought or a link and get in and get out without a major time suck of distractions. It forces people to get to the point quickly. There’s something very liberating about that. Hashtags are a great way to get more eyes on your posts and potentially more followers. It allows you to get in on a trend or start one. It’s allowing all of us to enter in an international conversation while we’re sitting in our living rooms. It many ways, it’s become the ultimate chat room.

                                                         

While Super Bowl commercials were once just water cooler buzz, now viewers can immediately tweet their thoughts on the impact of an ad. We can instantly tweet our opinions out on everything from the Olympics to a political speech to comments on how a contestant just performed on “American Idol.’ Twitter has created a sort of “Twitter Vision” phenomenon and it involves everyone in the conversation 

LINKEDIN

110,000,000 estimated Unique Monthly Visitors

LinkedIn is obviously the most professional social networking site. It’s also the most efficient way to show colleagues in your industry and potential employers what you're up to. As the unemployment rate continues to hover around 8 percent, all eyes seem to be on LinkedIn these days. Whether you're looking for a job, want a better job or simply want a freelance job, LinkedIn is the go-to place for employers and employees. There is also nothing like LinkedIn on LinkedIn’s level.

                                              

People can tell if you've looked at their profile and probably don't want to get caught going on LinkedIn at work unless it’s to update something related to your current job.

PINTEREST

85,500,000 Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors.

There are dozens of reasons to hop on Pinterest, especially if you’re trying to attract a mostly female audience. According to The Social Media Report 2012 released by Nielsen, Pinterest’s audience has been predominantly females ages of 24 to 49. The breakdown of usage for Pinterest is 70 percent women; 30 percent men.

The report also states over the past year, 84 percent of women have accessed Pinterest via app, which means their utilizing this social networking medium on the go. But perhaps the most impressive aspect of this site its 1,047 percent increase in year-over-year growth. If you're not on Pinterest, you need to get on board.

MySpace

70,500,000 Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors.

This is one of the first major social networking sites and old habits are hard to break. While this narrowly beat out Google Plus to take the No. 5 spot, MySpace has been revamped with a whole new look and feel. Since it’s probably been awhile since you last logged in, you can log into the new MySpace with Twitter or Facebook or opt for the classic page design.

With Justin Timberlake putting some of his own star power and bucks behind the site now, the new MySpace is moving more in the direction of Pandora and Spotify with the option to make up your own radio stations and create playlists.

Facebook Declined To Comment: Google Didn't Return Requests For Comment

The travel app company Waze is believed to be the subject of a billion-dollar bidding war between Google and Facebook, in a move apparently aimed at tying its social functions more closely into the rival firms' networks.

A fortnight ago reports suggested that Facebook had bid $1bn for the business, in order to wrap the "social travel" element into its billion-strong social network. But those initial approaches seem to have been rebuffed – and now Google is said to have entered the fray.

Any buyout by Google or Facebook could also have implications for Apple, which buys data from Waze for its much-criticised Maps application on the iPhone and iPad. In January, Waze was said to have been in takeover talks with Apple, for which it is a supplier of some map data. Apple was reported to have been offering about $500m for the company – an amount that was apparently rejected by Waze chief executive Noam Bardin, who was holding out for substantially more.

Now those bids seem to have arrived for the company, which has more than 40 million users, and which has attracted attention in the US for its ability to provide real-time information about traffic. Its social influence was highlighted after Hurricane Sandy, when the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contacted Waze to ask its users to indicate which petrol stations in New Jersey were short of fuel after the devastating storm so they could be prioritised for deliveries.

Waze, founded in Israel in 2007 but now headquartered in Silicon Valley, provides a free smartphone app which uses GPS sensing when the user is in traffic to determine their speed; by amalgamating it with other Waze users' data, it can generate real-time information about holdups, accidents and other problems. That, in turn, helps to predict optimal routes avoiding congestion or roadblocks. After Hurricane Sandy, the company sells anonymised data sets of maps and traffic to third parties.

The travel app company Waze is believed to be the subject of a billion-dollar bidding war between Google and Facebook, in a move apparently aimed at tying its social functions more closely into the rival firms' networks.

A fortnight ago reports suggested that Facebook had bid $1bn for the business, in order to wrap the "social travel" element into its billion-strong social network. But those initial approaches seem to have been rebuffed – and now Google is said to have entered the fray.

Any buyout by Google or Facebook could also have implications for Apple, which buys data from Waze for its much-criticised Maps application on the iPhone and iPad. In January, Waze was said to have been in takeover talks with Apple, for which it is a supplier of some map data. Apple was reported to have been offering about $500m for the company – an amount that was apparently rejected by Waze chief executive Noam Bardin, who was holding out for substantially more.

Now those bids seem to have arrived for the company, which has more than 40 million users, and which has attracted attention in the US for its ability to provide real-time information about traffic. Its social influence was highlighted after Hurricane Sandy, when the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contacted Waze to ask its users to indicate which petrol stations in New Jersey were short of fuel after the devastating storm so they could be prioritised for deliveries.

Waze, founded in Israel in 2007 but now headquartered in Silicon Valley, provides a free smartphone app which uses GPS sensing when the user is in traffic to determine their speed; by amalgamating it with other Waze users' data, it can generate real-time information about holdups, accidents and other problems. That, in turn, helps to predict optimal routes avoiding congestion or roadblocks. After Hurricane Sandy, the company sells anonymised data sets of maps and traffic to third parties.

For Facebook, Waze would provide a further route into the burgeoning mobile space, where purchased photo-sharing app Instagram for $1bn in April 2012. Buying Waze could give it more opportunities to sell mobile ads, as well as getting better data about its users' movements.

For Google, Waze would help to enhance the social side of its new maps app, which was unveiled at its recent I/O conference earlier this month. Waze has received a total of $67m of venture capital funding, the most recent a $30m injection in October 2011 which valued it at around $250m,.

Facebook declined to comment. Waze and Google did not return requests for comment. For Facebook, Waze would provide a further route into the burgeoning mobile space, where purchased photo-sharing app Instagram for $1bn in April 2012. Buying Waze could give it more opportunities to sell mobile ads, as well as getting better data about its users' movements.

For Google, Waze would help to enhance the social side of its new maps app, which was unveiled at its recent I/O conference earlier this month. Waze has received a total of $67m of venture capital funding, the most recent a $30m injection in October 2011 which valued it at around $250m.

---

Hi, I'm Vivek S Nair an professional SEO Worker and pure content writer. You can catch me and follow me, or could join me too.

Google Reviews Are Prominent With An Official Knowledge Of Graph Update

Google GOOG +1.66% officially announced that some big changes to a Google Local LOCM +1.19% Search feature with its new “Carousel” of local results at the top of the search page. These results show above advertisements in a large banner (see image to right) and are quite prominent. This change has been coming for a while, however, its roll-out signals a range of opportunities for business owners and marketing executives.

Google Officially Launches Knowledge Graph Carousel

While these new results are at their most visually-compelling on the desktop, the results are mirrored on mobile devices. They do not look the exact same, but when I compared the results on the iPhone 5, iPad 2, and Samsung S3, the results were very similar and highlighted most of the same results in a Maps/Places “box.”

Some pundits have argued this is a move toward “smarter search” and not necessarily “social search” and no doubt that is true to some extent. However, I see it as an incredibly social search type move. By making consumer-driven reviews more prominent in local search results, Google makes results far more social than before. The first thing you notice after the photo is a Zagat score and the number of reviews, which are done by consumers and possibly those within your network although that is not clear at this point.

Google Reviews Lean On Google Maps

As others have written here before, and I have said in my own posts, Google Maps is at the very core of much of Google’s work. The latest acquisition of Waze proves some of that out, for sure, and how Google desires to make its social efforts far more practical and useful – more than simply showing you photos of cats. Social media-driven maps are a slice of how local search/places could become more significant to searchers. Google is always iterating on search and on how we experience it. Bringing real-world locations to the top of search results benefits consumers and certainly local  merchants who are also potential advertisers.

With its new “Carousel” of local results at the top of the search page, Google presents users with a faster way to get local information. If the carousel can deliver a more accurate result, packed with more useful information at-a-glance, that will likely have far-reaching implications for how consumers use Google on the desktop, on mobile devices, new tech gadgets — for example, those all-too-fashionable, up and coming, glasses that Google introduced recently. I’m sure it isn’t far behind that the reviews you see from Google Places will be pulled out or highlighted if they come from someone in your Google+ network. Smarter search, for sure, but social as well.

---

Hi, I'm Vivek Nair an professional SEO Worker and pure content writer. You can catch me and follow me, or could join me too.

Google's Panda and Penguin Are Replaced By SEO With Social.

As a blogger who can't tell a Panda from a Penguin, at least the ones prowling on the web, I decided to investigate when I noticed changes in the Google search results of my posts and was told I might be the victim of the pair of these lovely creatures. Happily, I also noticed significant increase in visits to my blog from Google.

As they were intended to maul the Mal-practitioners of SEO badly enough to ensure a cleanup of the ecosystem of the Web, Google must have chosen, names like Panda and Penguin for its ferocious algorithms, with a purpose.

If Google counted on lovable creatures like Panda and Penguin to assuage the mayhem it intended to unleash on its own support network, albeit with a good purpose to weed away the undesired, it seems to have created only bad blood. The truth and Irony is, if SEO will eventually die, it will not be because of these poor creatures who take the blame but on account of Google's own measures to personalize search for each of us.

Like all ethical rules Google play to, personalized search may be what we want and even be the best thing for us but it takes away all other definitions of natural selection of what is most relevant.

The Great SEO Turf War Of 2012

The trouble started when influences like Forbes magazine declared "Google is in the process of making the SEO industry obsolete, SEO will be dead in two years." and appeared to advice the Industry "not to waste any more money on SEO".

"The Death Of SEO": The Rise of Social, PR and Real Content" appeared to lead to a turf war between SEO Heavy weights who were miffed by the advice being given to business to save millions of dollars spent on SEO and the evangelists of PR eager to be rehabilitated together with the new breed of Social Media Gurus, who will love a piece of the cake.

Google Panda and Google Penguin

Has Google's Penguin Bitten?

No one (except Google perhaps?) really knows exactly how the Panda and Penguin and their various updates have worked and caused and how much irrevocable damage to the SEO fraternity.

Naturally, the SEO specialists who have been affected and consequently lost their contracts and revenues do not come forward, at least in public. However a new generation of real marketers seem to know how to repair the damage and take corrective actions as part of the service they offer.

Google has zeroed in on duplicate content and now shows only the authority sites where I have recently published in the search results and ignore numerous syndication and re posting on my own blog. On the other hand It looks like Google is showing my own blog posts more prominently, sending more visitors for the search terms I have used.

What is not clear is how Penguin has affected big content providers like News Cred who engage in generating in-house content by big corporations and its distribution through syndication. News Cred has recently blogged assurances about how Google does not object to legitimate syndication.

How Google Will Rule the Roost Over Search and Our Lives?

What is not noticed in the battlefield of SEO is how Google is implementing its own scheme of total control of search and your life by it, making any form of SEO less relevant.

It is already clear that as long as people continue to use Google as the default engine & Google continues to push organic results further down the page or below the fold then any form of SEO will effectively be obsolete before long. Recent changes and consolidation of Google's own products including Google+ have significant influence on how search will be personalized and how results can be presented. This is what one expert had to say.

---

By: Vivek Nair.