A group of students at Harvard Business School have conducted research testing Twitter‘s purpose, and information on it’s user activity. Some key findings: Men have 15% more followers than women , A man is twice as likely to follow another man than a woman , Most activity on a social network (posted on Twitter) is focused around women , The average number of lifetime tweets per user is one , 10% of Twitter users account for 90% of tweets. The full analysis including diagrams can be viewed by clicking the link below.
Bing (formerly Windows Live Search), is Microsoft’s new take on a search engine. Aiming to compete with Google, Bing’s unique advantage is it’s ability to intelligently suggest which links are most relevant to the user (it uses semantic technology developed by PowerSet, a company Microsoft purchased in 2008). It is estimated that Microsoft will be investing $100 million into Bing’s marketing campaign.
Digital Sky Technologies (DST – based in Russia), has invested approximately $200 million for a 2% stake in Facebook. DST also owns VKontakte (Russia’s most popular social networking site with over 34 million users), and is the largest internet investor in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Note: VKontakte is very similar to Facebook in both design and functionality.
Queen Rania of Jordan was recently interviewed on what she thought of Twitter, and how she used the micro-blogging service. The Queen has several initiatives to develop awareness of the power of web technology, as seen in her YouTube Channel. Click below to read the interview.
Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering at Google (a former Microsoft general manager), gives a few words on what drove him to switch companies, and the furute of mobile technology.
