I feel that FriendFeed represents a big threat to Twitter.

I found out today about the launch of a new network; ’YouAre’ from Spain. I applied for beta access today. 

This is a micro-blogging platform with aspects of LinkedIN, del.icio.us and others combined with a secret sauce, which hasn’t been revealed as yet. Screenshots available here.  

I am keen to trial the new service and will cover it here. I have been told that my access will come through in a few weeks.

The beauty and irony of the social networking is that I found out about YouAre on FriendFeed via Duncan Riley’s post. That would be like the Sun newspaper in Britain running a story on the launch of the Today newspaper and suggesting I check it out or me placing a classified ad in the window of my local newsagents suggesting that passers by check out the newsagency down the road. 

Consolidation in this space is inevitable. We’ve seen it in most industry sectors, take the ERP market in recent years. Most industries mature before they consolidate but the social networking sector will get there much more quickly surely.

The issue of monetization is one spanner in the works still.

Now it’s my turn to experience a social networking glitch…

Plaxo (Pulse) is telling me I’ve done things that I haven’t done. It’s giving me credit for the content creation of my connections.

For example:

I see that I recently uploaded some pics from a trip to Paris. 

Weird!

I haven’t been to Paris since ‘97 but my colleague Ed got back two weeks ago.

I was also surprised to see that I had added a couple of notes to Facebook in the last few days. The first was a link to an NYT article and the second a post on the LaGrange Point blog (see below).

The funny thing is: It’s not my blog. It’s not my article.  

You can see what’s happening here:

Plaxo is BETA so maybe they are due the benefit of the doubt.

The network seems to be gaining traction with a professional audience. There is a gap here - Facebook falls short and is poorly positioned for business users.  These discrepancies only relate to Facebook notes and updates, so maybe it’s a Facebook problem. I have no idea.

The bad news is that glitches like this and the resulting coverage can un-do months of good work in  minutes and hours resulting in serious reputational damage to emergent brands.  

Anyone else experiencing this? 

For the two connections that I reference in this post – thanks. I hope you don’t object to the reference.

I watched a bit of TV and saw Richard Branson talking about the environment. He said that all Virgin Atlantic profits for the next ten years would be invested in research into clean fuels. I did a Google search but couldn’t find anything on this – did he just announce it? Surely not. Not on Australian TV!

Let save this and see if the Google Map worked…

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