Monday’s Social Mashup: March 5, 2012

Closest I got to the scene of the fire.@KaytiNowak: @keselowskipost another picture!! i’m loving this right now” twitter.com/keselowski/sta…

— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012

Keselowski, an avid tweeter, clearly took advantage of the time sitting on the track to pull out his phone, snap a shot and tweet it out to his followers.  NASCAR certainly appreciated it and even praised Brad for his social media savviness. NASCAR released the following statement about the tweet possibly violating rules:

Nothing we’ve seen from Brad violates any current rules pertaining to the use of social media during races. As such, he won’t be penalized. We encourage our drivers to use social media to express themselves as long as they do so without risking their safety or that of others.

The Mounting Minuses at Google+

Despite the rapid growth of Google’s social network, users are not staying on the site long. According to new data from comScore Inc., users spent an average of three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January. Compare that to the six to seven hours users spent on Facebook each month during that same period.

Why the lack of engagement? Analysts say it’s due to the lack of differentiation between Facebook and Google+. While Google+ has some original features, such as “Hangouts”, overall it’s not that much different from the user experience on Facebook.  According to Brian Solis, an analyst at Altimeter Group,

“Nobody wants another social network right now. Google hasn’t communicated what the value of Google+  is.”

Google executives have tried to downplay the comparisons to Facebook and defended the network saying that it acts as a supplement to other Google services, such as Gmail and YouTube. Google+ users may have noticed recently that when they search on Google, they get personal results that include content from Google+.

Marketers are unimpressed with the return on engagement they get from Google+. For example, Intel Corp.’s Google+ page has over 360,000 members, yet the activity on the page has been underwhelming. While Intel gets dozens of responses to its posts on Google+, it gets thousands of comments from its nine million fans on Facebook. David Cohen, an executive vice president at Universal McCann, said,

“Google+ does not have the same degree of vibrancy that Facebook, Twitter or even Pinterest has at the moment. Without active engagement, it will not be as attractive to advertisers.”

This provides a huge obstacle for Google+ since advertising dollars are the main source of revenue for social networks.

Are you actively using Google+?

Facebook Users Becoming More Privacy Savvy

After years of seeing embarrassing photos surface on Facebook, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reports that users have become more aware of their of their own privacy and reputation on the social network.

According to the new report, people were more likely to use the basic privacy features in 2011 than in 2009. The chart below shows the increase in the usage of privacy controls between 2009 and 2011.

In general, teens and young adults are more privacy conscious than older people. According to the graph below, 62% of  tens say they mostly post content to friends compared to 59% of 18-29 year-olds, 60% of 30-49 year-olds, 52% of 50-64 year-olds, and 55% of people over 65.

Are you more conscious of your privacy settings on Facebook?