The Social Media Minute

Social Media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here's the weeks' SM news in scan-friendly format.

This Week:

• Google Chrome, (because yes, it IS a social media story).
• Twitter hits 99.x% Uptime
• The Scandalous Shock of Disgraceful Digg's Bribery Scandal
• Socialmedian does Newsstreaming as Lifestreaming
• Shozu Social App hit iPhone
• Socialcast 3.0: Social Networking in the Enterprise

Google Chrome

Google launched a new browser this week. You may have heard something about it. It's great, far as we can tell (here's our take on Chrome), and is tailor-made for running rich web applications, because it runs RIAs in seperate tabs in their own environment, or something. Which FireFox and IE do not. Which is why FF 3 crashes like a mutha and why IE usually runs like a 3-legged dog.

If this column were about what people were using social media to discuss, the agenda (above) this week would read:

* Google Chrome
* Google Chrome
* Chrome is amazing
* Chrome is trash and invites hackers
* Chrome is a tool of the NWO/martial law in America conspiracy
* Google are the good guys. MS are the bad guys.
* Google are the bad guys. MS are also the bad guys.
* VPilfs are good but Republicans are bad— except for 'Right-on' Ron Paul, who invented Liberty and Linux.

The point here is that a faster and more stable running environment for RIAs will enable developers to put more stuff on your screen, and this will have a direct impact on the development of social media applications (it should also help video advertising a lot). This blogger puts his eminent reputation on the line and says that by Feb. 09, Chrome will have 20% market share of the US, Euro and India browser market. If you haven't tried it yet, do so. It's lightning fast, even compared to FireFox 3, which most of us thought was a greyhound.

Meanwhile ZDNet report a serious security flaw in the Chrome makeup, which was identified by Aviv Raff and posted to his blog . The browser is built on WebKit, the same technology as Apple's brilliant Safari browser. A vulnerability in an older version of WebKit enabled so-called 'Carpet Bombing' attacks, in which the user is tricked into launching executables from the browser interface. Apple patched the vulnerability some time ago for Safari, but the Chrome team evidently didn't get the memo, and went with the vulnerable, older WebKit version. Ah well. They'll get it sorted soon, no doubt.

Mozilla, not to be outdone, has released figures which claims that FireFox 3.1 will be faster than Chrome.

Twitter Hits 99.x% Uptime

Twitter has been behaving itself extremely well lately, which is a credit to all the new and existing staff which have battled to fix its infrastructure problems over the past few months (useless fact of the day: there are 24 f/t staff and a handfull of contractors working at Twitter). To celebrate, they circulated a bragging email to tell everyone how great they are. Says Biz Stone: 'Last month we saw 99.88% uptime and so far this month we are at 99.96%.'

Well done to all concerned. But with Twitter now working the way it should, who's going to be the new blogging whipping-boy? Hmmm… who or what is deserving of our spite, indignation and ire?

The Scandalous Shock of Disgraceful Digg's Bribery Scandal

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch reports on an interview by InvespBlog with a top Digger, who claims a 34% hit-rate for stories getting to the front page of Digg.com.
For what its worth, that figure sounds highly suspect: MrBabyman is probably the preeminent Digger, and he gets a little over a 20% hit-ratio (look at his stats on the right column, towards the bottom of the page.)

In any case, this anonymous Digger claims that he can charge US$300 just for submitting a story, and with bonuses etc. for reaching the front page he can cash in to the tune of US$1200. Just for submitting the darn thing. Nice work if you can get it.

The Social Media Minute

Social Media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here's the weeks' SM news in scan-friendly format.\n\nThis Week:\n\n* Google Chrome, (because yes, it IS a social media story).\n* Twitter hits 99.x% Uptime\n* The Scandalous Shock of Disgraceful Digg's Bribery Scandal\n* Socialmedian does Newsstreaming as Lifestreaming\n* Shozu Social App hit iPhone\n* Socialcast 3.0: Social Networking in the Enterprise\n\n

Google Chrome

\n\nGoogle launched a new browser this week. You may have heard something about it. It's great, far as we can tell (here's our take on Chrome), and is tailor-made for running rich web applications, because it runs RIAs in seperate tabs in their own environment, or something. Which FireFox and IE do not. Which is why FF 3 crashes like a mutha and why IE usually runs like a 3-legged dog.

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