Google + ... the best for brand advertising !

As stated in the previous article, there is a definite winner. Google + would also be the winner to convert brands to it.

1- Facebook has a low CTR (Click-through-rate) on ads which makes it unattractive for paid search ads driving to Facebook. The adverts that appear when needs arise are not relevant and so will be dismissed as unattractive to the user. Google is more efficient in its adverts model. Firstly Google adverts are much more measurable as to where the investment goes. Secondly adverts are ranked based on their relevance to the needs arising. This makes Google + more attractive for advertisers.

2- Everybody sees the brand differently. Brands can suffer from obsolescence if not changed or customized at specific periods, for instance seasonal chnages in adverts or advertising based on current events. That's why Google + is more relevant to advertisers as it allows a customization to meet individual needs.

3-In business if adverts cannot be evaluated based on investment value then it becomes unattractive as the manager cannot provide a detailed evaluation of tracking the investment. Furthermore information is power in business which makes Facebook unattractive as post click engagement of non-Facebook ads driving to Facebook. Again Google + is more relevant and useful to marketers here.

Following is an example of a Google + brand page for Coca-Cola :

An overall fight with a definite winner ...

As follow up to Stefan's previous article, let's compare Google and Facebook but not only as social networks but as whole companies on 3 key topics : Number of users, revenue and number of employees.

Users :




As of may 2011 google was the first to go over the 1 Billion of viewed pages (shortly followed by Microsoft webstites (905M)). Facebook ended up 3rd with 713.6M. In the US, their results were closer because as of may 2011, the score was of 155M for Google vs 140M for Facebook.






Revenue :



According to the Wall Stree Journal, Facebook Advertising revenue were of 1.86B$ in 2010 and should be near 4B$ this year. On the other site Google generated 29.3 B$ in revenue in 2010 (and not only from advertising !). Google is definitely ahead on this matter.






Employees :

According to the New Yorker, Facebook had about 2500 employees (2 times more than at the beginning of 2010). Google has now more than 24 000...

Work conditions and salaries are generous in both cases..

Salaries

Here’s a look at how median annual salary ranges for jobs at these two companies compare, according PayScale.com. Google pays more, overall.

Account Manager
Facebook: $33,876 - $66,027
Google: $43,999 - $111,572

Administrative Assistant
Facebook: $26,500 - $52,700
Google: $29, 368 - $62,584

Software Engineer
Facebook: $49,204 - $117,705
Google: $72,719 - $141,168

Sales Associate
Facebook: $26,100 - $59,300
Google: $23,977 - $66,899

Google employees also make more money out of the gate.

Median Starting Salaries
Google: $82,600
Facebook: $59,100

Percentage Above Market Pay for the IT Industry
Google: 23%
Facebook: 13%

Perks

Both Facebook and Google employees report being extremely satisfied at work. Perhaps both companies earn brownie points with their employees by providing cool perks.

Facebook
• Free beverages
• Flexible schedules
• Cell phones

Google
• Meals
• Daycare
• Pets at work


Even though Google + as a Social network still does not really stand up, as an overall company Google is definitely far ahead. The Challenge for Facebook will be to differentiate itself by entering new activities (e.g Music Market with partnerships with Spotify) and to keep innovate with a special focus on user privacy..


Sources: http://frenchweb.fr/google-vs-facebook-les-chiffres/

http://blogs.payscale.com/salary_report_kris_cowan/2011/07/facebook.html

The Cold War

Time seems to prove that Facebook and Google are engaged in a long lasting rivalry with an unknown issue. At first hand we can be mislead by thinking that Google and Facebook are offering complementary services and that those two giants are not really in the same field of expertise. Indeed the two companies have built their core businesses on different areas of the internet, one on search (Google), the other on social networking (Facebook). But limiting the comparison between these two to this judgment couldn’t be more wrong. As we are going to see, Larry Page – Google’s founder and CEO – and Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook’s founder and CEO – are engaged in an internal war of an intensity rarely seen before in the Silicon Valley. The fight will result on who will shape the future of the web. For now, the only outcome we can be sure of is that consumers benefit from better services from both companies compared to only one year ago.

The Strategy

There are two different points of view based on the same assumption, everything on the web starts by a search. From this basis, Google and Facebook have built their success on different strategies. Google bet on the fact that as users we want to make our own research based on what we want (i.e. if I want a new pair of sneakers, I am going to search for it). Facebook on the other hand foresaw, or rather provoked the change of we how use the web. I don’t search for the pair the sneakers I want, I wait for my friends to tell me what to buy. It seems that each company is trying to get closer from the other by “stealing” each other’s ideas.

Advertising

Both companies want to generate profit through their advertising strategy. Google is the worldwide leader in this field since over the 31 billion dollars engendered by the U.S. online advertising market; it almost grabs half of the market with 41% of the total market share. However, Facebook is becoming an increasing threat for Google as the search advertising industry is slowing and is focusing more on Facebook with a database of more than 800 million people who are spending more time on Facebook than on any other websites. Therefore, Facebook’s revenue from advertising is forecasted to grow by 81% this year compared to only 34% for Google.

Email

At the end of the year 2010, Facebook entered a face to face competition with Google with the launch of their own email address offering its users to create their “facebook.com” address while Google already battles in this field with its Gmail service. We have previously seen that Facebook users spend a huge amount of time on this website, and the facebook.com email address was created in this matter since in 2009 people spent only half as much time on Facebook as they did on Google. Facebook believed that with an email address on their website it will increase the amount of time spent on the website generating more revenue from advertising. We can now understand how everything is closely linked between those two Silicon Valley success stories.

Social Network

Here, Google turned to offense after the few strategic moves from Facebook with the creation of their very own social network Google +. As you all know Google + opened up to everyone in September after a trial period used to increase users attention and inputs to improve their service. Although it is very unlikely to see the 800 million Facebook users shift to Google + service, Google is clearly representing the main competitor for Facebook since it overcame MySpace (see our previous article). Google + benefits from a tremendous promotion made possible through all Google’s websites. We all know that the next step of the social network battle will be on the mobile market. Here again, Google with its Android phones is able to build many features for Google + directly on users’ phone. In response Facebook is trying to set an alliance with Apple – another historic rival of Google – and its Iphones to counter the recent moves of Google. It seems that Google wants to implement their Google + service in all the aspect of the company and not only limit it as a simple social network. This why Facebook reasonably fears the new service from Google as they don’t have the same back up as Google has.

Google and Facebook are competing on many other levels, but I decided to focus on the subjects we already talked about in our blogs. Have a look on this last chart (a bit outdated since it was in 2010 but still interesting). And feel free to read the articles with the links below for more information. 

(2010)

Cheers!

Sources:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703326204575616672123580274.html

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/03/technology/facebook_google_fight.fortune/index.htm

Information is power

Information is a vital element in everyday-life communication. Social media has been able to bring communication to absolutely new level significantly enhancing consumer decision making process.

Living in the technology-driven world, obtaining information digitally has become a fundamental part of the decision-making process. Existence of smart phones has allowed making a comparison, drawing a conclusion and undertaking a purchasing action with a simple scan touch. Social media transformed barcode scanning application into the ‘social scanning’ that helps users immediately get an access to the relevant information regarding pricing and characteristics of the competing products, and hence enabling them to make informed decisions and most importantly share the knowledge with the others through social networking distribution. This, in turn, allows businesses to measure consumers’ offline behaviour and improve their customer knowledge.

With the growth of Internet and the volume of information distributed, online search becomes extremely complex and often time consuming process. Realizing that, social media players decided to transform Internet search into intelligent information discovery. Online services of questions and answers evolved into high-scale information based platforms for accumulating knowledge in an organized way. Great examples are Quora, Ask.com, Swingly and Google’s Aardvark, who aim at enhancing information exchange through social interaction by providing socially relevant answers.

Social entertainment and location check-ins are another trend in modern online communications. These social networking services give opportunity to exchange information regarding peoples’ social activities and thus, outline patterns of consumer lifestyles. Entertainment check-ins “enhance the social experiences around television, and potentially inspire new audiences to tune into trending or friend-approved television”. On the other hand location based information services such as newly launched location check-in by Facebook and Google Latitude give opportunity to track the places visited, count time spent at each place and display information on statistics such as "Time At Work", "Time Spent At Home" and "Time Spent Out".

Given importance of information in making sense of the environment, an obvious fact is that the sphere of communication has expanded dramatically. Social media age has unquestionably redefined the way we obtain information.

Read the original article written by Jennifer Van Grove on Mashable Social Media

http://mashable.com/2010/08/20/top-5-social-media-trends/

Advertising Strategy of Facebook

Facebook and Google are competing a lot as of today, and in its new advertising strategy, Facebook is taking a leaf out of Google’s ad strategy and implementing it to its social media.There has been a constant attempt from Facebook to innovate time after time and advertisements are no exception to that. But the beauty with Facebook is that it has slowly transitioned from advertising as a message-delivering medium to a platform for social sharing. Needless to say it has been a radical approach. Now the Facebook advertising solution encourages the brands creating ads to make better “social media” relevant ads which can make its Facebook members to recommend and also share it with their friends.

When comparing Facebook with Google, one has to remember the past when Google had a choice to take money from advertisers to display their pages higher in the search ranking, but it decided to go the other way and in fact made the search engine as best as it could be. Intially, when Google was launched, its founders had no idea as to how they would make money. All they thought was that if they get in more people to use their product, eventually they would figure out a way to earn money. And it was exactly what happened.

Similar to google, Facebook too didn’t create a new category on its own but actually refined an existing category namely the social network.. Like Google, Facebook figured that if it got enough people in its network and if it improved its social network continuously, it would eventually figure out a way to earn money.

Initially Facebook made a mess of of its advertising strategy by introducing Beacn, the advertising platform as it informed friends of every purchase that one makes. Facebook has since realised its mistake and is moving towards the correct direction.

With the advent of time, Facebook’s ad strategy is slowly becoming clearer. Actually, Facebook’s strategy, like Google’s, is to not only improve its social network, feel and experience, but also to improve the advertising as well. Facebook allows business brands to create their own brand page free of cost and doesn’t make a dime on any of the pages set up by advertisers. As a marketer, it may seem that all is well for them as they have got a free brand page without spending any money. There may be a thought as to why one should spend for Facebook ads. The reason one has to buy ads on Facebook goes to the heart of why one needs to advertise in the first place. A simple reason is that a brand has to grow and reach out to new audience who have heard little or nothing about it. One can get only so far keeping their base happy. What one needs to do is to reach beyond them.

The best way to do this would be to approach friends of that base. Why? It’s because friends tend to have a halo effect on their other friends and can influence their decisions too.That’s the thinking behind two recent announcements from Facebook. One is a new ad unit The other is a set of metrics that will help administrators create better brand Pages.

The combination of the two reveals what Facebook’s future strategy looks like. Facebook is actually putting pressure on advertisers to create better content for their brand Pages. If they do, those brands will have a better chance of winning over friends of fans either by advertising or by creating something viral. Henceforth, brands will be friends or friends of friends rather than being a spammer and trying to bombard the consciousness of random target audience.

Social networking is still new, but so was search engine once. While figuring out how to make money off of search seems obvious in retrospect, it clearly wasn’t at the time of its inception. In the same way, someday we will look back at how Facebook invented social media advertising and wonder why no one thought of it sooner.

Source : http://www.scoop.it/t/media-representation/p/512325505/facebook-s-new-advertising-strategy-is-brilliant-and-unexpected

Driving out the Competition

So, what are some of the differences between these two social media superpowers? Google+ and Facebook are in competition to gain costumer value. But what is it that they offer which differentiates themselves? We can take a look at the two companies and analyze their antes, neutrals, distinctions, and most importantly for this topic, their drivers.

The Antes: Antes are the features of Facebook or Google+ that are just common expectations. These features aren't what is going to attract millions of consumers but they are necessary. They can almost be considered a "prerequisite to competition". In our case, both Facebook and Google+ have the chat option. You can talk with your friends online in real time. Am I, the consumer, running to a social media platform because they have a the chat feature? No way. It's too commonplace. However, am I avoiding a certain social media platform because they don't have the chat option. Absolutely. That's why I say antes are a prerequisite to competition. There must be a chat option for me to even think about using a certain platform. Of the four categories, the antes is where we will see the most characteristics. My reasoning is because whenever there is a successful differentiation within this industry, the rest usually can quickly and easily copy that feature. Other antes for Google+ and Facebook include uploading photos, commenting, video calling, etc.

The Neutrals: Neutrals are the features that aren't very important nor different in the consumers eyes. It's difficult to find many neutrals for this industry. Since Facebook and Google+ both want to make themselves distinct platforms, then they would want to eliminate those features that aren't very important to a consumer and that don't differentiate themselves in anyway. They want to provide a sleek and streamline platform that is not bogged down by features that won't even be used.

The distinctions: These are the features which differentiate the two platforms but aren't very important/relevant to the consumer. For example, on Facebook, i can go and "poke" someone. I can't do this on Google+. No other social media platform allows you to poke someone. However, I have never poked anyone on Facebook. It's not very important to me. Of course it's a differentiating feature for Facebook but if they were to disable this feature tomorrow I would not even notice. It's a distinguishing mark but not an overly attractive one.

The Drivers: These are the most influential features that Facebook/Google+ can provide. These are the features that differentiate the two and that are very important to the user. These are what bring the largest quantity of users. Here are some of the most obvious differences: How you manage your friends is a very obvious difference. On Google+, you can arrange your friends into different circles where as in Facebook you can also arrange friends into different lists but it is not really promoted. What makes this a bigger difference is that you can more easily share photos, messages, videos, etc., with only these circles of friends on Google+. Another driver for Google+ is their advancement in video calling. In contrast to Facebook, you can leave a video message on Google+. A more abstract but hugely influential driver that puts Facebook in favor is simply the amount of users on Facebook. Facebook still dominates in the amount of regular users. You can't fully use the features on Google+ if there aren't as many people to use them with. For example, I am driven to Facebook because I know there will be a full list of people to chat with right now.

As Google+ gains steam and adds users, the circumstances will change along with the antes, neutrals, distinctions, and drivers. All we can do is sit back and enjoy.

Sources:

http://bostinno.com/2011/07/11/google-versus-facebook-pros-cons-infographic/

Clash of the Titans

Google and Facebook have been keeping each other under focus for years. One being a social networking muscle and the other being the ultimate search engine, neither could have predicted that one day they will face off in such a direct competition over the internet savvy consumer.

Both giants of new Internet Age managed to build successful brands pursuing fundamentally different marketing strategies. Yet, many tend to forget that digital consumer market is highly fragmented, which gives opportunity to tap a market segment creating value within a single niche. They say that a fierce battle between Facebook and Google+ is about begin, but the question arises, is there a need to compete when both can enhance their platforms by sharing one common playground?

The younger Facebook, which has been holding the crown in social media since the fall of MySpace, knows what the young and tech savvy consumers want. Thus, FB succeeded in expanding its outreach through a set of digital devices of a modern digitally well equipped consumer, enabling social connectivity regardless of the external circumstances. It goes without saying that Facebook accomplishes its goal of maximizing social exposure of its users within various channels of its platform.

But then again, having realized the dramatic time shortage in modern society, Google focuses on a time efficient approach by creating a unified platform that helps not only access integrated ecosystem with a single sign in, but also navigate faster and easier within a real-time information stream. This is where Google+ jumps in facilitating the broadcast within selected groups in social context giving its users a freedom to choose the way they want to build their social connections.

Read the original article written by Judy Shapiro on AdAge

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/google-thing-happen-facebook/228554/

Twitter and the French market: a love story?

Quick overview

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that allows its users to send "tweets". Those tweets are text-based post limited to 140 characters. If we had to sum up, let’s say that tweets are online SMS.

The company was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and gained worldwide popularity, with over 300 million users as of 2011. The users are generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day.
(Source : http://blog.twitter.com/2011/08/your-world-more-connected.html)

In France Twitter started around the end of 2007. Although it started pretty slow, it is the website that has known the biggest growth at the beginning of 2009.
(1382% in February – Source Nielsen : http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitters-tweet-smell-of-success/)

But even tough 80% of the French internet users know Twitter, only 7% have an account, which makes about 2.4 million users out of 37.54 million French internet users. (Source Mediametrie in Journal du net - http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/le-net/nombre-internautes-france.shtml)

In March 2011, another study from Semiocast evaluates the number of French Twitter account to 2.4 million. This total also includes non-active accounts.




Compare to the 27 million of French Facebook users, Twitter is falling far behind. Even Google+ which only opened at the end of June has about 3 million users.
(Source : http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/audience-google-passe-devant-twitter-en-france-39765102.htm)


3 reasons for the limited audience in France

1) Twitter has a specific language

Although how it works is as simple as it can get, because the user only has to type in what is happening to him at any point in his day. It gets more complicated.
To use it, you’ll need to understand what “@...”, “CC”, “Twitpic”, “URL Shortener”, “#FF” and interactions are working. When you take the time to look it up, it is not that complicated, but it is still a barrier for some users.

2) Building a community is time-consuming.

To build a community in Facebook is simple. You just need to search and add “friends” and they will be able to see your post on their wall. It is mostly casual and does not need to be about a specific topic. You can be added regardless of the number of friends you have. Usually you will be in contact with person that you know In Real Life.
On Twitter it is quite the opposite. You need to have followers to be considered as “influent” and to be followed. People are mostly basing their judgment for who they follow on the number of people already following them… Therefore it is hard to start on it when you create an account with zero followers. It will be very time-consuming for the user to build a community and if you do not share a particular interest you will feel alone at first on the media…

3) Twitter is fast, too fast …

Does anyone have the time to spend its whole day on the Internet ? I do not think so. Facebook’s newsfeed allows people to check out very quickly what their friends have been up to during a day. With Twitter, there is no way to check out what happened during the whole day from the moment you start following more than a few accounts…



So yes, Twitter has some advantages (up to date information, professional contact, fan-follow, company visibility etc.), but the users have to put effort in the social network and for this reason only a few people will keep following their account after 10 tweets.

How Did Facebook Overcome MySpace?

And the undisputed champion is……Facebook. But how did Facebook seemingly easily annihilate the previous social network giant, MySpace? There are many different theories such as the one explained to us by Sean Parker, one of Facebook’s founders. Without any research, I was always under the impression that MySpace turned out to be a really immature website. On MySpace, users were constantly competing to have the most artistic page, to have the most friends, and even to be in each other’s top 8 friends list. I mean seriously, you had to rank your top 8 friends! That screams high school thought mentality.

Turns out, after researching more about the collapse of MySpace, I was pretty much right. MySpace catered to the very young demographic from 13-17 years old typically. When their market segment started to outgrow the website, MySpace was either unwilling or unable to adapt. The site started to become the thing that kids used. All the growing teens flocked to Facebook, the college age (at the time) social network. And if you know any young teenager’s thought process, you would know they love the thought of being seen as older or “college age.” Facebook, in deep contrast to MySpace, was a simple platform. You could upload photos, comment on friends’ walls, and cutely “poke” them, etc. No more battles for popularity. Once Facebook grew steam, MySpace didn’t stand a chance. MySpace tried to simplify itself and add features that Facebook already mastered but it was too late. The marketing management at MySpace did not adapt in time and they ended up paying the consequences dearly. They went from being sold to NewsCorp in 2005 for $580 million to being sold to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake in June 2011 for around $35 million.

Facebook is better equipped than MySpace. Facebook hasn’t marketed towards only one market segment except for the people that own a computer or smartphone. Importantly and most notably, Facebook has been able to integrate adults and older people into the site without losing that “youthful” brand appearance. I think this truly gives some security to the Facebook marketing department. Adults are typically more loyal to technological innovations than the fickle-minded youth. My grandma has a Facebook. (We’re not Facebook friends by the way) My grandma still has an AOL account which means that she sticks with companies, even if they are failing.

I think Facebook has and will continue to dominate the social media market. Unless Google+ has got some marketing strategy that will blow us all away. The competition will inevitably make social networking better. Just how much better is what we will have to find out…

Sources:

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/media/four-reasons-why-myspace-failed-to-retain-the-social-network-crown/3022208.article

The Science of Advertising

How does Facebook know I would be interested in the film “Drive”? How come my mom gets different ads, for example, to adopt a puppy or buy new fashionable boots? All because Facebook ads are tailored to your individual needs. Companies design their ads to be shown to the right people at the right times. Every time I enter information into “my interests” or “my favorite movies”, etc., I am sending a little hint to the advertising department at Facebook. You see, Facebook gathers information about you from all sorts of different sources. They accumulate information from your age (most obviously acquired), down to your actions (a little tougher to gather) on Facebook. Once all these different information’s are compiled, then Facebook can make a profile of you. According to my Facebook page, I am a 20 year old male student who enjoys Chicago sports, drumming, rap music, etc. Now, if Facebook has around 800 million of these profiles, companies are willing to pay top dollar to acquire this information. Companies want to advertise efficiently. They want to advertise to the right audience every time. When Facebook allows them to know my location and personal preferences, etc., then the companies can more accurately advertise and focus their message towards me.

Another key factor in Facebook’s profile of me is my account activity. Around 75% of all internet users use social networking but it’s estimated that less than half of them actively participate and have a big influence on their social network. The users that constantly update statuses, upload pictures, comment on friends walls, like every post, etc. are the users that companies market towards. These users have the biggest influences. These are the users that will see a company’s ad. Companies are trying to stay one step ahead of the consumer when trying to sell to them.

There are a lot of things going on in the background when I change my status. I just find solace in the fact that I don’t have to buy anything. Cheers!

Sources:

http://technology.inc.com/2009/01/01/online-advertising-through-social-media/

http://www.newfangled.com/how_to_use_facebook_to_promote_your_business

A Solution to Privacy Leaks?

The goal of social networks is for users to share and connect with other users. The last decade has seen the explosion of new social networks companies with the example of Facebook gathering all over the world 800 million addicts. 800 million people who share all kind of information on any topics they are interested in. By extensively encouraging us to be more “connected”, we have unconsciously started to give away all our private information to a gigantic database. Do I need to let my phone number be available to the world? Do people really need access to my phone number? Are they even interested in getting my phone number? Probably not. Yet, revealing our private information has become a norm in a society where all of our life can be found on the internet.

On the other hand, we get scandalized when Facebook (often) faces security issues. And there is more room to be shocked when we think of what they do with our data - including selling them to third parties. Well, it means that we still value our private lives. Four NYU students claim they found the solution to this matter and founded a new social network called Diaspora*. Diaspora* is based on the principle that we want to keep control over the information we share. When we post of picture on whatever social network we use, the information is directed to a centralized hub so we basically lose control of it. Computers are more powerful than ever, so Diaspora* proposes a decentralized social networking system where your information is directly sent to the people you want to share it with. Diaspora* already lunched the alpha version of their social network, the beta version should rise pretty soon. We can only wish them to succeed with this great idea. Check out the video for more information.

Cheers!

Sources:

http://www.helium.com/items/1835414-what-is-the-diaspor

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr

a-social-network

Social Networks - A small recap

10 years back, when I made a new friend, we used to share our house addresses, telephone numbers and write them in a pocket diary to preserve the details. If I were to make a friend today, I would just have to add him on Facebook. Yes, this is the age of the social network which has had an explosive growth in the past decade and has garnered quite a few eyeballs.

It is interesting to learn as to how social networks developed. Towards the close of the 20^th century saw the rise of many dating sites where users made profiles with photos and other information to contact other users. Meanwhile during this time existed various primitive social networking sites like Classmates.com (which had users belonging to common colleges) and also Six Degrees which closed down in a year. Some sites like Live journal took a different approach and built network around constantly-updated blogs.

Social networking took a leap with the launch of Friendster, which went on to add 90 million subscribers as of now. It helped people discover their friends, friends of friends, and so on. Within a year saw the launch of hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace. Hi5 is slightly different from Friendster, in the sense that a user’s network consisted of friends, friends of friends and so on. LinkedIn, though a social network was created for business people. Currently it is growing at a rapid pace and is a place for business people to interact and get to know each other. MySpace, launched in 2003 had a decent growth and it went on to become the most popular social network in the world. The specialty about MySpace was that users can customize their profiles.

The year 2004 saw the launch of Orkut and Facebook. Orkut was Google’s social network and it grew rapidly in Brazil, India. But it was later plagued with viruses and now the number of active users has gone down. Facebook, which was initially a social network for Harvard Students, became open to public slowly in 1-2 years of its launch. Currently it is the world’s most successful social networking site.

At present, Google is trying to stage a comeback with the launch of its new social network called Google+ . The launch of Google+ raised quite few eyebrows and it attracted many users to register for it. And with its launch, Facebook tweaked its functionality and has made changes which somewhat reflect the features of Google+. The war of the two giants has begun. But who will win this? Only time will tell.

Sources :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/10/the-history-and-evolution-of-social-media/