Facebook Friday: Will Photo Upgrade Be A Flickr Kicker?

Just a day or so after I wrote about the online arms race between Facebook and Google, Facebook announced more upgrades, this time to their photo-sharing feature. But before I get to the affect this will have, here's the low-down on this high-res photo upgrade:

• The biggest difference will be a larger photo size, increasing it from the current 720 pixels to 2048 pixels (184% increase)
• This larger display size means support for high-resolution photos, which is good considering how prevalent high-res cameras are nowadays.
• Facebook will use a lightbox display for photos, meaning you won't have to jump from page to page to view each photo.
• As expected, internal upgrades should allow for faster upload times.

So that's the technical side of the upgrade, but what about its impact?

Clearly, this puts Facebook in direct competition with Flickr. Until now, Flickr carved out a niche for itself as a photo enthusiasts/professionals' network with high-res capabilities, while Facebook was the place to share snapshots and family photos.

It's same dynamic we see between YouTube and Vimeo, where YouTube (like Facebook) is the much more popular site with lower quality videos and Vimeo (like Flickr) is less trafficked but specializes in higher quality videos.

And even when YouTube started supporting HD videos, we didn't see Vimeo fall off the map. That's because the professionals who had helped position Vimeo as design-oriented saw no need to switch websites because Vimeo is as much about the site's demographic as its HD capabilities.

This is why Flickr shouldn't be too concerned with Facebook's upgrades. Photography enthusiasts and professionals will continue to use Flickr because that's the niche it's carved out, and it goes beyond the high-resolution features. That's why these upgrades are nice, but not enough to muscle out Flickr.

Remember, no amount of organic products can turn a Wal-Mart into a Whole Foods.

Say What? Twitter Just Now Surpasses MySpace

I remember about 6 months ago when our house finally got a DVR, and me excitedly telling my friends about it. But instead of sharing in my joy, they all blankly stared at me wondering, you didn't already?

That's the same reaction I had yesterday when I saw a Wall Street Journal article about Twitter finally surpassing MySpace in unique monthly traffic.

I wasn't at all surprised about Twitter outpacing MySpace, but I was shocked (and I doubt I was the only one) that it hadn't already passed MySpace years ago.

Even more surprising were the numbers themselves. Twitter had 96 million unique visits in August, a 76% increase from the same time last year. But Twitter just barely beat out MySpace's 95 million August visitors, and that's after the original social networking giant took a 17% hit to their traffic. This makes Twitter the 3rd-most trafficked network behind Facebook and Microsoft's Windows Live network.

Both companies are hoping for significant growth over the next year or so, with the new Twitter.com launch getting positive reviews and the upcoming overhaul from MySpace.

Still, if Twitter were tell me they surpassed MySpace last month, I'd probably just blankly stare at them wondering, you didn't already?

The Facebook-Google Arms Race Heats Up

In the sea of Internet innovation, there are two big fish that we tend to see swimming the most: Facebook and Google.

And while other social media channels like Twitter are huge as well, the major trend right now is integration and moving towards conglomeration-type online hubs. Just look how Facebook expanded from simply social networking to multimedia and cross-platform integration. Meanwhile, Google's been dominant as a search engine and email utility and expanded with the addition of Google Instant and Google Talk/Voice phone and video chat.

Both companies have their strengths, and both companies have tried muscle in on the other one's territory. Google has gotten in on social networking with Google Buzz, and now Facebook has its sights set on Google with their developing partnership with Skype.

This is important because Skype is hands down the biggest player in the video chat game. Skype has already been integrated with Facebook to a degree, displaying which Facebook friends were on Skype at the time. Reportedly, this new integration will allow you to login to Skype with your Facebook credentials (nothing new there) and chat with your Facebook friends directly (definitely something new there).

Obviously, the 500-million-plus Facebook users won't see much of this new integration for a few weeks. But this is yet another step in the continuing race between Google and Facebook to establish Internet-wide dominance online.

The New Twitter Finally Makes It Way to the Land of 10,000 Lakes

Yesterday was a big day for the tweeting masses here in Minnesota, because that's when the new version of Twitter was made available to many of us around the Twin Cities. That group of new Twitter tweeters includes some of us around the Axiom office, so I thought I'd give more of a hands-on review of the changes as a followup to my post earlier this month.

For those of you who haven't gotten the updated version of Twitter, here's Axiom's page:

The major change is the visual redesign to a two-panel layout, reflecting the look of the iPad Twitter app. Personally I really like this new look, but like any visual overhaul it will vary from person to person.

As you can see, the customized background (particularly the left sidebar) did get affected. However a little resizing of the background image should remedy that, but it should be noted that there is a noticeable effect.

From a user standpoint, there are several changes that make the Twitter experience much smoother:

• You don't need to leave your Twitter page to view pictures or other profiles, they just show up on the right panel.
• Interestingly, while Facebook moved their 'Messages' tab from the top of the page to the sidebar, Twitter moved their 'Messages' tab from the sidebar to the top of the page, separating it from the '@ replies' and 'Retweets' sections.
• My favorite change? A search box. It sounds simple, but finding people or tweets on Twitter is much easier with a box on the main page.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, this is mostly just a visual change. It shouldn't revolutionize the way we live our 140-character lives. However, I do like the changes overall and I think it should make the Twitter experience as a whole a little better.

Is Google the Betty White of the Internet?

Google turns 12 years old today, which in dog years is pretty old...and in technology years is just about ancient.

The search engine giant is celebrating its birthday with a birthday cake logo on its home page, but that should come as no surprise seeing as how Google is just as well-known for its special logos as its search capabilities.

But what's most surprising isn't just that Google has survived, but that it has reemerged over the past year or two as an online titan. This brings me to why I titled this post the way I did.

Here's the comparison: Betty White was a star years ago, then sort of faded in the minds of the general public (basically fell off the face of the earth) but over the last few months has been everywhere with her surge of renewed popularity.

Likewise, Google enjoyed great success early but declined slightly with the social media boom of Facebook and Twitter, only to rise back through the online ranks with innovations to its search and mail services and the success of the Android OS.

So although 12 years old seems pretty young, surviving and thriving in the fast-paced and highly-competitive Internet technology field is definitely worth celebrating.