Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the full suite essentially places all of your data and entire workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all anywhere, any time, from any Internet connection. |
At $50 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective, and even adding the free versions of Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs into your workflow can keep your employees coordinated. |
For more casual users, or even those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a guide to how the software can benefit your small business. |
Do you guys have other examples of this type of success? Spain-based social networking platform provider Genoom, which lets family members communicate amongst each other on private online community sites, is about to sign up its millionth user. |
This isn’t exactly a huge milestone, but I think it is noteworthy since the startup is operating on a mere $80,000 in seed funding, which it raised from Midatel roughly 3 years ago. |
On the Genoom website, users can add family trees, personal information, photos, videos, and related documents about ancestors and living relatives alike, limiting access to uploaded information through invitations and custom group privacy settings. This makes the service effectively a marriage between genealogy and social networking. |
Genoom offers a handy Facebook application, allowing users to access their family tree and communicate with family, all while logged into their Facebook account. |
The application, known as iGroups, is designed to let people meet up and exchange information in a way that is focused on ensuring privacy.
The USPTO documents are pretty detailed in terms of how the application — and the related patents — work. The big takeaway seems to be that group controls are granular and that location uses something called “virtual GPS” — which appears to be using either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi as proximity tools. |
A side note — there is an existing iPhone app called iGroups, which means that if this app does come to the marketplace, Apple might have to work with the developer to resolve the name issue. Read more at mashable.com |
 Facebook appears to be adding another level of analytics for Fan Page admins: weekly e-mail reports. A number of page owners forwarded us statistics sent to them on Wednesday from the social network, while we received some of our own for the various Pages we manage.
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The reports aren’t especially detailed, offering only the number of fans added, comments, likes and visits in the past week. Nonetheless, it’s more data for the publishers and brands using Pages — a need that a number of third-parties like Webtrends and Omniture have recently started to try to fulfill. |
The feature hasn’t been officially announced yet by Facebook, but it follows January’s rollout of Post Insights, which tells you the reach and feedback level of each item you post to a Fan Page. Meanwhile, Facebook’s overall Insights feature for admins can tell you details about your demographics, longer-term growth and engagement trends. |
| SXSW Interactive is now over. While a clear winner in the “Location War” has yet to be determined, the truth is that many of the location-based services won, as all of them got a huge amount of exposure over the past week. And look for that trend to continue in a big way, as Apple is now highlighting several of them in the App Store. |
As you can see in the images in this post, Apple is highlighting five of the key location players both in the App Store on iTunes, as well as on the App Store on the iPhone itself. On the iTunes version, the apps have their own area right below the “New & Noteworthy” area. On the iPhone, the five apps takes up the top five slots of the “What’s Hot” area. Simply put: This promotion is huge. Read more at techcrunch.com |
For your reference, the 2010 estimate of the size of the United States population stands at roughly 310 million people according to Wikipedia, so that’s a shitload of people browsing the Web from their phones right there. |
The report, which you can purchase here, also says the number of mobile Internet users in China will grow fast to reach a staggering 957 million, and that the country will count approximately 1.3 billion mobile subscribers by 2014. |
eMarketer points out that those mobile Internet users do not currently monetize as well as smaller mobile audiences in, say, the States, which means that mobile advertising spending levels in China are still low relative to the size of the mobile Web user base. Also, the company highlights another key trend in China, which is that mobile subscriber growth is actually slowing while mobile Internet user growth is accelerating. Read more at techcrunch.com |
| Today at SXSWi, keynote speaker Danah Boyd took the stage to talk about privacy and publicity, and how they intertwine online. Boyd is a Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, and has studied this space extensively for years. It was a compelling talk that challenged the notion that personal information is on a binary spectrum of public or private. |
Boyd says that privacy is not dead, but that a big part of our notion of privacy relates to maintaining control over our content, and that when we don’t have control, we feel that our privacy has been violated. This has happened a few times recently. |
Boyd then discussed how different groups of people think about privacy. She says that teenagers are much more conscious about what they have to gain by being in public, whereas adults are more concerned about what they have to lose. Read more at techcrunch.com |
National Public Radio had an interesting story this week about the direction of online games .
Hot flash number one… Gaming is still growing - all platforms, all genres. Americans spent $20 billion on video game equipment last year. That’s twice what they spent five years ago. And that’s in a market where many of the most popular games today (Farmville, Second Life, etc.) don’t require the purchase of any equipment.
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Hot flash number two… There’s a new demographic: middle aged women. They are the biggest demographic playing Facebook’s online games - Farmville, Mafia Wars, Willy’s Sweet Shop, Bejewelled, an so on.
Hot flash number three… Rewards: Advertising behavior is becoming a key to playing time. Most games start out free to play. But you can play only so long. Read more at www.socialnetworking-weblog.com |
Ning CEO Gina Bianchini is being replaced as the CEO of Ning by COO Jason Rosenthal. Bianchini founded the DIY network of social networks with Marc Andreessen. But after five and half years at the helm, she is ready to try something new. She will transition to an entrepreneur in residence role at Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm started by Andreessen. |
In a blog post, Andreessen (who remains chairman of Ning) notes: |
Ning today is one of the world’s top social networking properties, with more than 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users, and is far and away the market leading social platform for interests and passions. Ning Networks span every area of human endeavor, from the arts to business, politics to social activism, and every other field you can think of. Over 5,000 new Ning Networks are created every day, and we’re adding a million new registered users every 12 days
Read more at techcrunch.com |
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Google Apps: A guide for small businesses from @mashable
