Technically Speaking: SocNet War, Hootsuite and Twitter DM

It’s almost like watching a cheesy Japanese horror movie from the ‘70s, perhaps The Kracken Defies Godzilla. Yet here we are, in 2011, seeing two titans fight for social network supremacy. Of course Facebook, with its 650 million users worldwide is light years ahead of Google’s new Google+ product that is still in beta. However, Google+ has some great new features and ‘change waves,’ especially in the tech field, can sometimes happen unexpectedly and with lightning speed.

In the meantime, there are three main differentiating factors with the new Google+ product—Circles, Sparks and Hangouts. Circles allows users to sort their friends into groups, which is not a Facebook option. Sparks is a new way to utilize Google news by topics, etc. And lastly, Hangouts is a group video chat option that allows people to pop in and out of communication with friends. For a lot more detail on these topics check out this LA Times story…

>>>While the heavy hitters talk about Facebook and Google+ this week (see above story), Twitter continues to grow, almost unopposed and with no direct competitor. Naturally artists and their team members endeavor to perch on the cutting, nay, bleeding edge with repsect to the best ways to bend and shape the Twitter universe. The following thenextweb.com story highlights an important change in the requirements for direct messaging.

Twitter verified accounts {Brands} can let followers Direct Message without following back. According to theNextWeb.com, The relaxation is aimed at providing Twitter users that have large follower counts with a private system with which they can receive a personal message without having to go through the tedious process of following the user, asking them to direct message them, and then unfollow the user after it has been sent. Twitter has not announced whether the feature has begun rolling out to all users.

It remains to be seen how brands and artists will respond to the new rules which are likely to result in added streams of personal messages to process.

>>>Hootsuite, the social sharing tool, recently passed the 2 million mark in signups. It hit one million users in Nov. 2010, seven months ago. The service, which is free for about 95% of its users, offers a multitude of tools for social networking handlers including custom interfaces, scheduled updates across all platforms, a plethora of social network analytics and more.

The company’s blog offers this description of its future direction:

Amidst all the consolidations, acquisitions and changes in the marketplace, we are proud to keep leading the way with unique features and thoughtful improvements. As the first social media dashboard, HootSuite has helped define new ways of understanding how social media tools and tactics can be applied to small and enterprise business, political campaigns, government management, civic revolutions, emergency response or just connecting with friends about hobbies you enjoy. With a heaping handful of networks already in the dashboard, look for more connections and tools to come as we are aren’t slowing down.