Google+ Now Has 50 Million Users (After Just 88 Days)...

That's the latest tally from 'unofficial Google+ statistician' Paul Allen, whose figures are now being closely watched. No, not that Paul Allen (Microsoft, American Psycho): this is the cofounder of ancestry.com who uses rare surnames to forge Google+ estimates, the latest of which now crosses a healthy 50 million.

That is, after just 88 days, a 'breakneck' if we've ever seen one. "Since being opened to the general public (over age 18) last week, Google+ has been growing by at least 4 percent per day, meaning that around 2 million new users have been signing up each day," Allen noted.

All of which makes this a great time to start ramping your Google+ strategy. Because Google has a huge base to convert, starting... now. "By integrating +1 and Circles (targeted sharing) and other Google+ functionality into its Chrome browser, Android phones (and tablets), Gmail, Google Reader, Blogger, Google Photos, and other properties, Google+ will give its more than one billion users repeated chances to sign up for and use the functionality of Google+," Allen relayed (of course, in a Google+ post).

All of this is happening against significant product development, including more work on profiles for companies (and perhaps bands as well...)

Join the early discussion.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/092911googleplus

FACEBOOK IS THE NEW GOOGLE

Facebook Admits to Tracking Logged-Out Users...

paul

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Spotify dropped the undeletable cookie, but Facebook has now admitted to tracking users — even when they're logged off. That is, through various cookies and unique identifiers sent from like buttons, all of which are complicated to remove. "Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit," programmer and technologist Nik Cubrilovic exposed in a recent blog.

"The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions."

This also means that users will probably share more activity than they intended, thanks to 'lubricated' APIs. But don't worry, Facebook can explain. Perhaps attempting to contain another privacy blow-up, Facebook told the Wall Street Journal that this complicated cookie-and-identifier setup is all about security. That is, preventing false logins and phishing attacks without extra authentication.

And, Facebook further claimed that all of this logged-out data is immediately deleted (you'll just have to trust them on that). "The onus is on us to take all the data and scrub it," said Arturo Bejar, Facebook's director of Engineering. "What really matters is what we say as a company and back it up."

Facebook is no stranger to these sorts of breach controversies. The company has been caught improperly collecting data on a number of occasions, and its security standards are, let's say, insecure.

All of which raises another question about Spotify's decision to attach themselves to the Facebook hip. Because these things don't always end well.